


Transmit The Message To The Receiver

by salt_n_pepa



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1970s AU, Gen, M/M, action? kinda, semi-short fic, there's not gun violence even though its an action-y fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 21:50:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11366331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salt_n_pepa/pseuds/salt_n_pepa
Summary: Natasha and Bucky, the high-level pair of agents working for SHIELD, are worn out from the high-intensity missions they're always assigned and want to be permanently assigned to minor field work. To do so they're put through a series of trial missions to test their qualifications in violence-free assignments. But during their final mission of the trial period, the two of them discover something that might get them thrown out of SHIELD altogether.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ah! It's finally here! So first I wanna thank the mods from the Cap Reverse Bang for putting this together. They made a really tough job look easy and were so helpful and nice to work with. I can't imagine how stressed they must be and how relieved they must be that the final posting date is on the horizon, haha. And I would also like to thank the artist who created the work this fic is based off of, Christina, or @muirific on tumblr, her art is so awesome and vivid and I'm so glad I got to work with it! Anyway, please enjoy the fic :)

 

by [Christina](http://muirific.tumblr.com/) :)

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Ernst Meyer,” said Peggy Carter at the head of the room. It was Peggy’s favored conference room since it was tucked to far away into one of the corners of the S.H.I.E.L.D building in Washington. There was no foot traffic and no chance of being overheard. She stood at the head of the table, Bucky and Natasha sat across from each other in the middle, and at the other end sat Howard Stark. “He’s a German politician. He’s mid-level and rising but a relatively low threat. He has a fair amount of influence that he doesn’t ever visibly use in favor or against his elected party. That being said, he tows the party line constantly.”

“We can assume he charmed his way into office, considering his incompetence and inability to make a single decision,” added Howard.

“Well, he was competent enough to obtain classified information from us so don’t get so cocky,” said Peggy. Howard rolled his eyes in response. “Which brings me to your task.”

“We can’t wipe his memory,” said Bucky in a tone that sounded more as if he was wondering aloud and less like a legitimate question.

“No, we can’t. Fourth page.” Peggy slid a file down the table to the pair of them. Natasha took it, Bucky never made a grab for it. She turned the fourth page and saw a blueprint for what she could only assume was a palace. “That is the Meyer Mansion in southern Alabama.”

“Alabama? What does a German want in Alabama?” asked Natasha.

“The million dollar question,” said Stark.

“To be answered another day,” interjected Peggy. “For now we need you two to find out the extent of what he knows.”

“You think he’s just gonna have a run down of all the information he stole lyin’ out on his desk or somethin’?” asked Bucky. Natasha kicked him under the table but she had a similar question in mind.

“Meyer’s not a clever man,” said Howard. “We have reason to believe the files that went missing from the records room are physically in his possession, not just the information inside of ‘em. Finding that file folder is all we need to assess how much of us he knows about.”

“A German politician has someone steal a file folder from the records room of a little-known intelligence agency in America. He not only keeps said file folder intact, but also keeps it in his stateside mansion where the two of us could easily get to it because? He’s eager to get caught?” said Natasha. She couldn’t help but mouth off just a little considering how far their assumptions were stretching.

“Intel,” said Peggy. That was supposed to be a sufficient enough answer for the both of them. To be fair, Peggy had never declared information reliable based on intel and been proven wrong. “To get inside, you’re both attending a party of his as diplomats from Spain.”

“Spain?” asked Bucky.

“Oh, my apologies. Where would you rather be from?” spat Peggy.

“Spain’s perfect, ma’am,” replied Bucky.

“As I thought. If you could get this cleared up before our gala next week, that’d be ideal.”

“Convincing the president to keep funding us would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to discuss how easy it was for someone to steal our intel,” said Howard with a laugh. Peggy quieted that laugh with a look.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Natasha, her eyes scanned the debriefing in search of an answer and found none. “Don’t we already know what’s in those missing files? I mean, given that they went missing from the _records_ room? Shouldn’t there be a _record_ of it?”

Peggy’s lips tightened and her eyes bore into Howard. “You would think wouldn’t you.”

“Listen,” began Howard as humbly as his voice would allow. “Whatever agent of the German’s actually lifted the file off of us already thought of that. The records room is made up of sixteen chambers—chambers the size of warehouses each mind you. He wiped out the bookkeeping on the entire chamber he stole from. We’ve got a long, by-hand recovery process ahead of us to figure out what exactly’s missing. But to be fair this could’ve happened by accident too, record-keeping glitches are common.”

“Yes, well, that it should happen like this is very unfortunate,” spat Peggy.

“Considering the chamber of records room it went missing from, we can infer that whatever he stole was on the subject of Hydra. We think it’s the locations of the old compounds we raided but even after we pored over all the files on either side of the missing ones there’s still no way to be _sure_ of what’s inside—ya know, aside from you two. Not like we had everything in there memorized,” said Howard, completely ignoring Peggy.

“We wouldn’t be doing any of this if you ran a tighter ship back here and had a firmer hold on the records room,” said Peggy under her breath.

“Fuck that! Whoever did this did it right! He wiped out all of the logs, he must’ve been working with us for years, you would’ve made the same mistake, Pegs!”

“That’s ‘Agent’!” Peggy slammed her folder shut and collected the folder she’d lent to the two of them. Natasha and Bucky both froze, waiting for Howard’s temper to die down. This was obviously something they had been arguing over for awhile.“Your plane leaves for Alabama in the morning. Your second plane back here leaves after the party that night. Beyond studying the blueprints, there isn’t any other prep work I can suggest. It’s fairly cut and dry.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Bucky and Natasha in unison as Peggy got to the door in a huff.

“Keep calm you two, I know you can almost taste it but this is still a trial period. Your level heads have got you this far, I have faith you’ll go the rest of the way.” Howard followed her out.

“She’s right, we can’t get cocky or we’ll fuck it up,” said Bucky once the door shut.

“Yeah…” said Natasha absent-mindedly. “Does something feel weird to you?”

“What feels weird?”

“I don’t know, I’ve just got a weird sense of foreboding. Haven’t had that in a while.”

“Nerves,’ said Bucky. “It’s just nerves. Our future’s ridin’ on this mission, I’m nervous too.”

“It’s not nerves,” said Natasha. “I haven’t had those in years.”

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

The story of Natasha’s transition from Hydra assassin, to S.H.I.E.L.D. asset was long, but it was also a story she was proud of. Her memories of home had become vague for various reasons but the one that stuck out no matter how much time passed was a goodbye she gave to the woman she called mother. Not the woman who bore her but the woman who trained her. Many of her home-memories were lost when Hydra began brainwashing.

It wasn’t until 1973, when Natasha was 24, that S.H.I.E.L.D. raided four Hydra compounds in search of the Red Skull. He had slipped through S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fingers during the war but since the Red Skull never made waves he was at the bottom of the priority list. But, by some stroke of luck, S.H.I.E.L.D. had the time and expendable manpower to raid a series of Hydra compounds.

They found no Red Skull but they did come home with roughly 80 brainwashed Hydra agents. Natasha was among them, as was the infamous Asset. He took up most of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s interest and time in the months following the recuperation of the ex-Hydra agents. With all eyes on The Asset she was free to roam and explore and befriend the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that surrounded her. Though, most importantly, she found someone to lean on while S.H.I.E.L.D. deprogrammed her and unplugged all of her kill switches.

Her human-crutch happened to be the symbol of America as a whole, Captain America. She knew him only as Steve Rogers, the man who shared his lunch with her, for the first two months of their friendship. He said he hadn’t told her in case she was just using him for credibility amongst the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Maybe she was but either way she enjoyed him and he enjoyed her. She found that Steve wasn’t a very private man though he pretended to be. It took very little poking and prodding to hear his life story. She heard all about his childhood in Brooklyn, his immortality, his friendships with the heads of S.H.I.E.L.D., including Howard Stark who was apparently the man who saved her life. But what he mostly spoke of was his dear friend Bucky who had ‘died’ in 1943.

According to him Bucky’s stint with Hydra began in 1943 and lasted until the raids. Natasha would’ve shared her side, her knowledge of Bucky’s time with Hydra but she knew it’d just upset Steve. The only news she ever got about The Asset was of his latest kills or the overheard rumors about what torture they were testing on him next. After all, he was superhuman and could take far worse than was ever doled out to the other trainees. She did tell him she’d heard of Bucky before and that caused Steve to cling to her even tighter.

Once he was healed up enough, Steve took her to meet Bucky. The other ex-Hydra agents were barely allowed to leave the bloc they were assigned to at the S.H.I.E.L.D. compound and Natasha had managed to meet the one agent they locked up tighter than a nuke. At first it had been strange to speak to The Asset so freely but he resembled Steve in many ways and in few weeks time it felt as if she’d been friends with him her whole life.

It was difficult for S.H.I.E.L.D. to justify the intake of 80 enemy agents so they spun them as new recruits. Ex-Hydra became S.H.I.E.L.D. and repaid their debt by doing the dirty work S.H.I.E.L.D. agents couldn’t or wouldn’t. Better trained agents were paired with equal counterparts so, naturally, Natasha was paired with Bucky. His metal arm gave him a leg up but they were still more or less on equally footing with their abilities, she was the only agent that came close to matching him. And it showed in their impeccable track record.

It took a year of rehab and four more of field work but Natasha had finally made a semi-permanent home in Washington. She had friends, she made plans, she got caught up in the minutia of life like she’d never been allowed to before. Yes, she still had to fight but doing it for the right side made it that much more bearable, doing it with people she knew personally and trusted made it more bearable. But not by enough.

While brainwashed she was a killing machine, all 80 of the rescued agents were, but after rehab they regained shadows of their original personalities and selves. Natasha found out she wasn’t as hard and cold as she’d always believed, and maybe no longer as talented as her brainwashed former self. Mission after gory mission forced her to that realization. Her hard head refused to let her admit it to anyone. Had it been left to her she would’ve continued in her downward spiral until God knew. Bucky was not so head strong. Or he was but not nearly as much as Steve.

Four years of being elbow deep in blood and gore, Steve told Howard and the rest of the board that Bucky had PTSD and couldn’t continue as a hired gunman. Killing as a Hydra agent was easy since mentally he was completely checked out, but being forced to commit the atrocities while completely lucid was traumatizing. Saying it out loud was out of the question, but Natasha felt very much the same. She filed her own letter of a similar nature. To onlookers she was supporting her partner, but to the more trained eye it was clear she was doing all she could to get reassigned without having to put her anxieties and instabilities on the table.

Eventually Howard caved and laterally reassigned Bucky to a tamer line of assignments. Bucky fought the decision hard but the minute Natasha admitted to feeling the same way he folded and they were assigned to more tactical missions with lower body counts on a trial basis. Though she had felt lost without the brutality for the first two missions of the transition, she couldn’t say she missed it. Bucky certainly didn’t. He loved getting dressed up to meet with dignitaries and leaving without any blood stains. Natasha enjoyed it too, she had amassed nearly a full closet of government issued evening dresses. But partying with ambassadors and swiping their black books didn’t exactly feel as helpful as her assassinations had.

They were allowed the reassignment on a trial basis. Killing was easy but blending in, schmoozing, fast-talking, it wasn’t something trained killers often had in their repertoire. So they were given a set of ten small-scale missions that, if executed perfectly, would grant them a permanent rest from their own personal hell. And their last was almost in the bag. If they could just nail the Meyer mission they’d be in the clear.

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

Natasha always took extra care when she applied red lipstick. It had become part of her persona but she’d never been particularly adept at it. It took her much longer than she’d ever care to admit to get clean lines and even coloring. Being sure none was on her teeth was a step she often forgot when she was younger but after one particularly embarrassing incident she couldn’t forget. Tonight, it went on smooth. She wouldn’t fool herself into thinking she was getting better but at the very least it didn’t take her more than fifteen minutes to get her lips done.

“Nat, you almost ready?” called Bucky from her room. S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t bothered to splurge for good hotel rooms but at the very least they each got their own, Bucky just didn’t act like it. She had shut herself away in the bathroom where she was able to pretend that half of her routine wasn’t devoted to correcting mistakes.

“I can’t make my hair curl faster, Barnes,” snapped Natasha as she wiped the red smudged under her nose. She checked her floor length, gold dress in the mirror once more. It was backless and clingy, perfect for its intended use. She was told she’d have to give it back after the night but maybe it would get ‘damaged in action’ and end up in her closet.

She stepped out of the bathroom and let Bucky pretend to be an adoring fan who showered her with compliments. She did the same for him. He knew he looked good in a suit and was never in need of compliment. But he still had to cut all of his left sleeves off to fit his arm in his coats. Seeing the hem of his mangled sleeve or the uneven texture of his metal arm through the jacket put him in a weird and sour mood that a compliment often fixed.

“Should be easy, right?” said Bucky as he combed his hair back for the millionth time.

“It’s a handful of files. If we can’t handle this then we don’t deserve the job.” It was just one file folder, one file folder of information that Peggy was sure was somewhere hidden in the mansion. They had both studied the blueprints of the house but the only one to really need it was Bucky. The plan was for Natasha’s looks and charm to distract Meyer, while Bucky, her faux-husband for the night, retrieved the file. She’d be spending the night dancing with a crooked politician while Bucky wandered around a too-big mansion looking for a few pieces of paper.

“You gotta up the charm, go as far as he wants, it’s your patriotic duty.”

“I’m Russian,” said Natasha.

“It’s easy to forget. You’re pickin’ up my Brooklyn accent.”

“I don’t think I’m getting it from you,” teased Natasha. Bucky had a sore spot for how close Natasha and Steve had gotten without his supervision. Coming out of the Hydra ether had been difficult for him, more so than others, and his attachment to Steve was the only thing to keep him grounded. But a grown man being that reluctant to share was something Natasha couldn’t not make fun of.

“Fuck off.”

“You know you’re so worried about me stealing your best friend and here I was thinking you were mine,” teased Natasha.

“Well,” began Bucky. The thought went nowhere.

“What d’you have on you?”

“Just two guns. Not even good ones. I figured we pack for what we hope for. If I pack for a ‘no trouble’ kind of mission, we don’t get any trouble.” Bucky adjusted his bowtie in the mirror, it refused to straighten.

“You know, living in that fantasy’s gonna get you killed.”

“You’re completely decked out huh?” Natasha met his eyes through the mirror and nodded. “How the hell do you grab a gun strapped to your inner thigh? How is that convenient? And in that dress?”

“You let me worry about that.” In truth, Natasha had only once been able to easily grab the gun in that holster. She’d lost weight and the holster hadn’t been tightened and it slid down her leg when she ran. It was also strapped to the outside of her usual suit which made it much less uncomfortable. She had no plan of attack to grab the one currently strapped to her thigh. If it came to it she could probably cut the dress at the knees and flash the room on her way to snatch it. But then she wouldn’t have the dress.

“I don’t know how you do these tricks sometimes, Nat, you’re like one of the spies authors make up.”

“And I’m honored to have a sidekick like you.”

Bucky laughed and rolled his eyes. He turned away from the mirror and towards Natasha. “Ready?”

“Sure…Hey do you think they’ll buy me a new dress for the President’s ball or make me wear this one a second time?”

“Burn it tonight and they’ll have to buy you a second one.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

A car pulled up to the hotel to drive them to Meyer’s mansion. Typically before a mission, they both got antsy or fidgety, but tonight was too clean-cut to worry over. Natasha just stared out the window and enjoyed the scenic Alabaman countryside until she spied the mansion. It was the only source of light for a few miles and was swarming with guests. The guest list had been the only semi-unknown but it had panned out in their favor. More guests meant more cover for whenever Bucky had to make his exit.

“Ya know it’ll probably be in a safe, wherever it is,” teased Natasha.

“Fuck you,” replied Bucky instantly. On one solitary occasion he had gotten so frustrated with a safe that he tried prying it open with his metal hand and ended up permanently locking it. Natasha never let him live that, or anything else, down.

“Just remember to count to ten if you get frustrated with it—“ said Natasha through a laugh.

“I can handle it! You just worry about seducing Meyer, redheads are an acquired taste.”

“As if I’ve ever had trouble keeping a man’s attention. Well all except you,” added Natasha.

The car pulled into a driveway that stretched to the back of an enormous lot where the actual mansion was settled. Chauffeurs walked their charges to the door on account of the rain. It was a gala of sorts to celebrate the host’s wealth or something equally trivial, which meant everyone was dressed to the nines, including Natasha

“Phil,” said Natasha through the partition, “If my hair goes flat in the rain the missions over. You’ve gotta walk us to the door like the other drivers. I’ve gotta make an entrance.”

“Chauffeur not driver. And no. I’m an agent, not a Chauffeur, walk yourself.”

“Phil, I’ll report you!”

“Fine!”

Phil stopped by the door like the other Chauffeurs, opened the door for Natasha and helped her out of the car. She waited under the umbrella for Bucky who took just a bit longer to gracefully slide across the seat. Phil took the rain head on and sacrificed himself for Natasha and Bucky who made it to the door without a drop on them. Natasha made a mental note to tease Phil about being a chauffeur for the next few days.

“Names please.”

“Joesph and Mary DiMaggio,” said Bucky. Natasha squeezed his arm a bit tighter for choosing such obviously fake code names.

“Ah, there you two are,” said the man as he drew a line across his list. “Please, head inside. Follow the crowd and you’ll find your way to the refreshments.”

“Thank you,” said Bucky.

Natasha couldn’t chew him out for name choice until they were gone so instead she smiled and let one of the staff take her coat. Bucky did the same and they walked arm and arm into the main hall where their host was schmoozing with the guests who had arrived a bit earlier. They had decided to come fashionably late to give Natasha more of a spotlight. It worked.

The room was built for parties, built for enormous numbers. The windows were stories high and lined an entire wall. They gave a clear view to the rainy, black outdoors. Tables lined the room, the center was clear for dancing. Other couples were directed to their informally assigned tables but Bucky and Natasha could see they could expect a personal greeting from the host who crossed the room to greet them.

“You must be Mr and Mrs DiMaggio!” He shook Bucky’s real hand, and took Natasha’s to kiss it. “Ernst Meyer. How is Spain treating you both?”

“Perfect, as usual,” said Natasha with a wide smile and thick Spanish accent. Their cover was ‘Spanish diplomats’. It was vague enough that no one would expect to recognize their faces or names. “Much sunnier there than here.”

Meyer ignored Bucky completely and didn’t notice him slipping from Natasha’s side.

“Care for a drink?” asked Meyer. Natasha pretended to think it over before agreeing and walking with him to a table of pre-poured champagne flutes. Her lips remained sealed when she sipped. “I’m so glad you and your husband could come, you didn’t make it last year.”

“Of course, we wouldn’t miss this for the world.” Natasha smiled wide and Meyer mimicked her. Over his shoulder, she spotted Bucky. He had found their table and was greeting the other two couples that were sharing it. “I should return to my husband.

“Right, I’ll catch up to you — to you both once I’ve said my hellos,” said Meyer. Natasha grabbed another glass for Bucky and walked to their table. Like her, he didn’t drink the champagne but he took the flute from her with a gracious thank you and smile. The two of them made sure to have presence with their tablemates in order to really sell the whole ‘diplomat’ persona. Natasha came up with their backstory and Bucky corroborated it for the first 30 odd minutes of talking with them.

Natasha didn’t listen to most of the conversation. She was focused on posing herself in a way that would catch Meyer’s eye from across the room. Loud laughs, shoulders back, and her ass out was getting most of the men’s attention so she could assume Meyer was among them. She knew she’d gone far enough when the men at the table started gawking just as obviously as the men across the room.

“i hope you don’t get another migraine,” huffed Natasha with the well-practiced phony accent. Migraine had long been their civilian code for something being amiss. It was a word that allowed them to show concern for the other and withdraw themselves from a situation without anything feeling strange to onlookers. In situations like this, it was a catch-all excuse for strange behaviour, including Bucky’s impending sudden and urgent need to withdraw to Meyer’s office.

“I’m sure I won’t, they haven’t bothered me for ages,” replied Bucky with a similar accent.

“If you say so. Tell me if you start feeling bad and we can leave.”

“Of course.”

Establishing to the people around them why Bucky would disappear was essential to not drawing more attention than necessary. In order to do that, Bucky let his temperament devolve from outgoing and involved to withdrawn and constantly massaging his temples. Because of his serum, and before that his genetics, Bucky had never had a migraine and Natasha always felt his migraine-act was hammy.

Dinner had yet to come but nearly two hours had gone by and the two of them were eager to speed the process up. It was difficult with Meyer halfway across the room speaking very seriously with foreign leaders. Their opportunity came when two couples got up to dance and started a trend.

Natasha needed only to look at Bucky for the entire thought to be communicated and no doubt executed flawlessly. She stood as noticeably as she could, and it was no easy feat to just _stand_ noticeably, and made a small show of asking Bucky to dance. Bucky made a show of rejecting her and citing his migraine. She asked again, he said no again. She asked again, and before Bucky could say no again, Meyer was at her side.

“Mrs. DiMaggio? What seems to be the problem?” asked Meyer, his hand didn’t hesitate at all as he ran it across the small of her back. 

“It’s my husband, he gets these migraines. Is there somewhere a bit quieter for him to let it pass?” asked Natasha with as pouty a mouth as she could muster.

“Of course.” Meyer’s eyes never left Natasha’s lips when he spoke. It was almost too easy. “Mr. DiMaggio, if you follow the main hall to the back of the house I trust you’ll find a room to your liking.”

“Thank you so much,” said Bucky with a fake groan.

“I’m sorry your husband’s gone ill,” said Meyer with sympathetic eyes. “But, would you still care to dance?”

Natasha feigned surprise and agreed with a shy smile. Meyer was a tall man with dark thick hair and piercing blue eyes that were the cause of the high number of attendees. He could have anyone he wanted but, being a politician, he was naturally drawn to unattainable women, such as the married ‘Mary DiMaggio’. Natasha knew it was sheer luck he took a shine to her on their way in but it was no luck that had him distracted and dancing.

She was coquettish and blushing in his arms as he spun her. He was eating it up.

“Mr. Meyer—“ husked Natasha.

“Please, call me Ernst.”

“Ersnt,” whispered Natasha. “Do you speak my language?”

“Spanish? No, why?”

“I hoped to speak in a more private language,” said Natasha.

“And why would you want that?” replied Meyer. Natasha feigned embarrassment and let Meyer believe he was winning her over.

It was too easy. Too easy to seduce, too easy to manipulate, too easy to win. She missed the thrill of the uncertainty of her old missions. Not enough to return to them but enough to be bored in Meyer’s arms. Bucky was practically given the key to the safe that Meyer no doubt kept somewhere in his office. All Natasha had to do was wait for him to grab the file and its copies and then they’d walk out the door like nothing happened. It was sinfully boring and sinfully tedious.

She let his hands wander, let him wax poetic about her eyes or her lips or her skin, let him whisper whatever he wanted in her ear. She only paused to check in with Bucky, or as she told Meyer, to touch up her lipstick. As she left the dance, Meyer promised to be waiting for her and she promised to return. The staff directed her to the nearest bathroom where she set up shop.

The door was locked, the window was blocked by a towel she hung up against the frame, and her radio was finagled out of her thigh belt.

“Buck,” said Natasha. “Buck, are you there?”

 _“I’m here, Nat,”_ replied Bucky through the staticky transmission.

“Switch languages,” demanded Natasha.

 _“Sí señor,”_ replied Bucky, _“Pero, porque?”_

“Porque elegiste español?”

_“Porque es la idioma de la pais que ‘stamos representando. Tenga un cierto orgullo patriótico!”_

Natasha rolled her eyes. “…Bueno, necesitamos hablar en algo ademas de ingles, por sí el puede oir nos.”

_“Si el tiene la tecnologia para oímos, probablemente tiene alguien que pueda traducir lo que ‘stamos diciendo. Pero, que pasa.”_

“Cómo va con la caja fuerte?” Natasha checked the door’s lock one more time before turning to the mirror to touch her lipstick up. She ran the sink to mask the sound of Bucky’s voice crackling in and out.

“ _Eh…No es algo que…he visto…”_ muttered Bucky on the other side.

“Que quieres decir ‘no he visto’, Buck? Eso es la _unica_ cosa que necesitabas hacer y no puedes hacerlo?!” spat Natasha as quietly as she could.

“ _Hey!”_ crackled Bucky’s voice. “ _’Stoy haciendo todo que puedo pero ese caja fuerte es_ muy _fuerte! No necesitas ser una perra!”_

“Ya me voy a dejar te aqui con Meyer si no abres la caja en quince minutos! Y te llamas me una perra otra vez vas a despiertate sin bolas! Apurate!”

 _“Si señor,”_ replied Bucky.

There were days she wished Bucky could be the piece of meat and she could do the gritty work. But other days, she wondered if doing the gritty work would lead to a want, a need, for more.

She touched up her lipstick as promised, it took too long but she did it. She switched the radio off and secured it back in her thigh belt before rejoining the party as casually as she could. Meyer was waiting for her at her dinner table just as he promised. She grinned as genuinely as she could and sat next to him.

“How’s the food?” said Natasha as she centered her plate in front of her.

“It’s just fine. But I’d much rather eat you,” whispered Meyer into Natasha’s ear. It was enough to fade her smile but on the plus side she had him right where she wanted him.

“I have a husband, remember?” replied Natasha.

“Yes, and where is he? I don’t see him, Mary.”

She couldn’t, and obviously wouldn’t, fuck him in the middle of a mission. Not even if she wanted to. But he was beginning to back her into a corner she would soon be unable to casually get out of.

“Let’s dance, Ernst! Before he comes back!” insisted Natasha. She pulled him from his feet and back onto the dance floor. His hands still wandered but at least the two of them were upright and surrounded by other people. She pretended to be just as interested in him as he was in her, no easy task. It was enough to tide Meyer over for however long she needed. Hopefully she would only need thefifteen minutes she allotted Bucky to keep him happy. Bucky wasn’t a whiz with safes but he worked well under pressure and giving him fifteen minutes to sort himself out might’ve helped him along.

Ten minutes passed and Meyer’s hands were no longer casually ghosting from the small of her back to her ass but becoming more permanent residents there.

“Oh, Ernst,” said Natasha in a flustered manner. “You’re too brash. All these guests must be staring.”

“Yes, well let them. I’ve already gotten a good enough look at you. I mustn’t be greedy.”

“But they all know my husband, Ernst. We shouldn’t be this obvious,” insisted Natasha. She caught his eye and he caught hers. She hoped her expression was still that of a smitten women, but she couldn’t be sure. At the sight of him her stomach turned with no discernible reason. He grinned, it only made her feeling of unease worse.

“Don’t be ridiculous. They’ve all seen you before.”

Natasha refrained from cocking her head at that. Meyer’s english needed work and sometimes it showed but there was something in her that felt as if that wasn’t a miscommunication. Her brain whirred in search of excuses to suddenly part from Meyer in search of Bucky. Thankfully she never had to think of one as moments later he came striding across the ballroom. He looked as panicked as she was uneased.

“Ah! Mary! ‘Qui ‘stas!” said Bucky on his way to Natasha’s side. She let go of Meyer as Bucky mercifully ended their dance. “Necesitamos ir.”

“Vamos cuando tengas lo por que vinimos,” spat Natasha.

“Lo tengo.”

“What did he say?” asked Meyer politely. His finger tips pressed into Natasha’s palm, threatening to pull her back into a dance.

“That we should leave. His migraine is only getting worse.”

“I could call a car for you,” said Meyer addressing Bucky. “That way you don’t both have to leave so soon.”

“That’s very kind but I’d be worried all night if I left him. Thank you for a lovely evening, Ernst. Sorry we had to cut it short,” said Natasha with a kiss to his cheek.

“Not as sorry as I am,” whispered Meyer. Natasha looked over her shoulder a few times on her way out to really sell the emotion she was playing. The act stopped when Phil Coulson brought their car around and shut them in it.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Bucky looked nauseous on the drive off of Meyer’s estate so Natasha held off on blowing up at him for onlyOnly once they hit a main road did she begin chewing him out.

“What the fuck was that?! You nearly blew the whole thing! That wasn’t subtle at all!” screamed Natasha.

“Yeah, ‘cause I really do have a migraine!” snapped Bucky in response. The word migraine had been their civilian code for something amiss primarily because Natasha had never had a naturally induced migraine, and Bucky was now immune to them thanks to the serum. There was no truthful use of the word from either of them and it always indicated something wrong.

“Well…Sorry. We’ll sort it out back at the hotel.”

“You’ve gotta hand off the files to me before you go, I didn’t dress in this fucking chauffeur outfit for nothing,” said Phil into the rearview mirror. Bucky handed up one folder that Phil stashed in the glovebox at the first red light they caught.

Natasha refrained from eyeing him the rest of the car trip to avoid raising Phil’s suspicion but it had been a long while since Bucky had come across anything he wanted to keep a secret from S.H.I.E.L.D.. They thanked Phil for the drive and headed back to their room to pack and catch their flight back to Washington.

Bucky locked all three of the door’s locks, closed the curtains and checked the air vents for bugs. Natasha helped him along with the process until finally he deemed the room ‘safe’.

“Sit,” said Bucky with his back to her. He ran his real and metallic fingers over the edges of the TV he’d just unplugged, checking for a bug one more time. Once he has assured himself that the room was clear, he turned to face Natasha and stripped off his jacket. The buttons on his shit followed. His metal hand was shit with delicate objects and he ended up ripping it open to reveal a set of files.

“You stored ‘em in your fuckin’ shirt!”

“What’d you want me to do, shove a file-folder up my ass?!”

Natasha grabbed the files from his waistband and began flipping through. The whole process of downloading everything Bucky knew into her would go a lot quicker if Natasha had the materials in front of her.

“This isn’t just a few files, this is,” began Natasha as she felt the weight of the file folder in her hands, “This has to be at least forty full reports.”

“They’ve got way more than we thought,” said Bucky as he turned her to a pertinent page. Clipped to a briefing of her exploits with S.H.I.E.L.D., was a picture of Natasha. It was maybe five years old but it still looked liked her.

“You…” began Natasha, her breath catching in her throat, “you found this in the safe?”

Bucky nodded and turned her page for her again to reveal his own briefing. Another page turn revealed Steve’s, then Sam’s, then Howard’s, then Sharon’s, then she snapped the file shut.

Her mind raced. If Germany knew about her work with S.H.I.E.L.D., it wouldn’t take much for them to learn about her past with Hydra, to learn about her true past and the horrors that riddled it, the crimes that riddled it. They could out her and her fellow agents to the world, compromising their lives and those of their families. But it’d be worse for her. She’d be a world-renown ex-Hydra agent. The most abhorrent title to be placed on anyone, aside from ‘active Hydra agent’. Five tireless years of rehabilitation and commitment to good and scrubbing her record day and night and it could all be undone by the old lech who had grabbed her ass too many times over the course of the night. The old lech who no doubt knew who she was the entire time, who no doubt spoke Spanish, who no doubt knew they had stolen something from him.

“Why didn’t you hand these over to Phil?” asked Natasha. Her mind was racing but her tongue was clear. “What’s your plan?”

“At best, this guy’s tryin’ to recruit old Hydra agents back into the force, at worst he’s gonna leak everything in these files to public. We hand those into S.H.I.E.L.D., they take us out of the rotation and sort it out with some rookie who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. This—“ Bucky grabbed the file from Natasha, “gets released to the public _anyway_. Now we’re all compromised. Steve and I—I move out of the country and Steve’ll have to too once the world know _exactly_ what he did to try and stop Hydra. You — fuck I can’t even imagine what’s in your file but you’ll never sleep easy again if anyone else knows. S.H.I.E.L.D. would just fuck this whole think up worse out of fear.”

“No,” said Natasha firmly. “I’m not gonna turn on S.H.I.E.L.D. just because you don’t think they can handle this. We’re on their side now and this is part of being on their side.”

“Nat, I’m not suggesting we go rogue for no reason. If for some reason they did decide to keep their best agents on this case, that’s us. But if we tell S.H.I.E.L.D. we run the risk of them taking us out completely and leaving our lives, and the lives of the agents in those files, up to someone who doesn’t have the skill.”

“Bucky, you’re panicking. We’ve gotta just turn the files all in and let Peggy and Howard take it from there. We’re no use to anyone without S.H.I.E.L.D. backing us.”

“Is that what you’ll be saying when we’re all scattered to the wind and you’re permanently lying low in some remote country where you’ve gotta start all over?”

His eyes bore into Natasha as she considered her response. She wanted nothing more than to stay loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D. but Bucky was right. The second they saw the extent of the information Meyer had, they’d shut it all down and pull any of the mentioned agents out of the field. That would leave the far less experienced agents to clean up an insurmountable mess. There was no chance of it being done to the extent that she and Bucky could do it.

“What’s the plan then?” said Natasha. Bucky just stared at her. “You don’t have one do you.”

“I’ve got one but it’s rudimentary at best.”

“What is it?”

“We need to get back to S.H.I.E.L.D. to find out who this guy really is, ‘cause I know you’re also feelin’ like we didn’t get told the whole story. I’ll think of step two once we get through step one. Now, pack,” said Bucky.

She changed out of her dress and into street clothes in silence. She stuffed the dress into her bag along with the weaponry she’d brought. Her mind was blank throughout. Bucky was right, they were the people for the job and S.H.I.E.L.D. would never give them permission. She wasn’t betraying yet another agency she was just helping them fix something they didn’t know was broken. At least that’s how she had to think of it.

“Okay. Once we miss our flight in a few hours, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s gonna come looking for us,” said Natasha once she and Bucky had finished packing. “We’ve gotta get somewhere they won’t find us before then. Any suggestions?”

“Well we’re goin’ back to HQ so—“

“We shouldn’t go to HQ,” added Natasha. “Everyone there’ll be looking for us.”

“Okay but we need S.H.I.E.L.D.’s records.”

“The original records room is still up and running back at Lehigh. We just have to hope they’ve updated it.”

“I’m sure it’s up to date, I’m sure Howard turned that place upside down looking for the other copy of these files. And I’m _sure_ that after this incident, the records room in Washington and Lehigh are locked up tight.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Where do we go right now?”

Bucky thought for a moment. “The sewers. They’ll never check there, no one ever does.”

“We’re just gonna walk from here to Lehigh?” groaned Natasha.

“That’s how we’ll start. Come on.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The hotel was bought and paid for and another car pulled up to building to take them to the airport. Natasha and Bucky never showed up for that car. Two hours prior they’d left out the front door and hadn’t stopped walking. They ducked down into the sewers, it wasn’t ideal but it was convenient and safe. Bucky held the only flashlight between them while Natasha navigated. Her red lipstick was smudging and her hair was deflating the further they went.

“In a mile or so, we’ve gotta stay right,” said Natasha. Bucky stopped shining the light on her map and turned it back to the path ahead of them.

“You look like a John gone wrong,” said Bucky. He wasn’t as used to having his life exposed as she was and was considerably more touchy about it. Natasha had decided to be the bigger person and wasn’t going to bite at his bait.

“So we really are just gonna walk to Jersey through the sewers?” asked Natasha.

“Feel free to lay your brilliant ideas on me, Nat,” spat Bucky.

“I say, we resurface in another few miles north and catch the train like normal people. They won’t be looking for us among normal people.”

“In another mile we’ll cross into Georgia. I doubt they’ve got a train that runs up to New Jersey.”

“So we have to connect a few times, stop being a baby.”

“I’m not bein’ a baby!’

“Buck, we’re gonna figure it out. Stop panicking before you have to.”

Bucky didn’t respond but his stride lengthened and forced Natasha to quicken her pace to keep up. They walked the next few miles in silence. It was only broken when Bucky spotted the ladder out.

“I’ll go first,” said Natasha as she hopped up onto the ladder. Shoving the manhole cover up and over was much easier than pulling it out had been. She pulled herself up and out and assessed. They were in the middle of a road that was completely dead. It was either the location or the time of day that had done it. From her calculation, the sun would rise in another few hours which meant in the small town they’d wandered into, few people would be out roaming. “It’s clear, come on up.”

Bucky climbed out and dragged the manhole back to it’s original position.

“Now what?” said Bucky.

“You keep asking me as if this was my plan.”

“The leaving the sewer part was. I was up for walking through to Jersey.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “We should get sleep.”

“What? _Now?_ ”

“I know you’re tired. We’re no use to anyone if we’re exhausted. Come on.”

Natasha led them down the wide and empty streets until they stumbled upon a motel. They didn’t look very good, and they smelled worse but the woman at the counter still took their money and still handed them a key. Natasha thanked her in her best Georgia accent.

Bucky called dibs on first shower which left Natasha in the room to plan. Getting to Lehigh while avoiding S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn’t be easy but it definitely could be done. The question was if it could be done _in time_. If Meyer had those files, he knew Natasha and Bucky’s faces, he knew they’d stolen the files from him, he knew that they _knew_. If Bucky’s hunch was right and he was attempting to recruit ex-Hydra agents back, he wouldn’t risk the two of them undermining it. He’d probably release the files to the public under the guise of political transparency. It would stop Natasha and Bucky in their tracks and let Meyer swoop in and scoop up as many ex-Hydra agents as he wanted.

“What’s with the face?” said Bucky as he emerged from the bathroom in a towel.

“I’m thinking,” replied Natasha.

“I’ve thought enough for us both. We’re not gonna get there are breakneck speed but I think we’ll get there in time to figure out what our next move is before he spills our guts to the world. Go shower,” said Bucky.

“What if we get to Lehigh and it just confirms what we’re thinking, that he _is_ ex-Hydra and that he is using all this information about us to find weak links and lift them off of S.H.I.E.L.D.. What then? What do we do about that?”

“A wise woman once said to me, ‘we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it’. Go shower.”

Natasha trudged to the shower. She got in with her clothes on to give them a through rinsing, then peeled them all off under the uneven and weak stream of water the shower provided.

If Meyer was ex-Hydra, he was clearly using the information to find other ex-Hydra agents to recruit and spill secrets about S.H.I.E.L.D.. That was the most likely case. In such case, Natasha had to assume they’d hunt him down themselves. It felt like she was becoming a vigilante, but she knew, and Bucky would tell her, that S.H.I.E.L.D would’ve assigned them that exact mission anyway. Their odds of succeeding were low if Meyer was ex-Hydra. He’d be expecting them and he’d have a lot of time to prepare.

If on the odd case that Meyer wasn’t ex-Hydra, it was still suspicious of him to have the information he did. In that case they’d have to hand it back to S.H.I.E.L.D., they’d get raked over the coals for going rogue, they might lose their jobs, they’d definitely lose their chance at becoming field agents instead of ‘assassins’. Either way they sliced it, something was going to go wrong for them.

She lathered up her hair and struggled to rinse it all out with such low water pressure. The water turned cold, she suffered through a few more seconds of rinsing before jumping out. Her clothes hung on the shower curtain rod next to Bucky’s to dry. After shaking out her hair as best as she could, she rejoined Bucky and dug through her bag to find something to wear. Bucky laid sprawled on the bed, lazily fiddling with the radio knobs.

“What’re you looking for?” asked Natasha.

“The game,” replied Bucky.

“Which one.”

“Any one. Any sport. Anything.” Bucky gave up and turned his attention to Natasha. Upon seeing her, he paused. “Have you no shame?”

“What?"

“Wearing nothin’ but a towel with a gentleman present,” replied Bucky in a thick southern accent.

“I’m not in the mood for jokes, Buck—“

“Honey, if you don’t put on a series of petticoats, my blushin’ll kill me,” teased Bucky. His stress often pushed him far enough in missions that he went from a cranky old man to his regular self again. A state of so much stress that he felt none of it. Natasha had not yet reached that stage, instead she had just reached her grumpy old man stage and was in no mood for Bucky’s southern belle impression.

“You and I both know I could be standing here naked and you wouldn’t look twice,” spat Natasha.

“What?” said Bucky with a fading laugh. Natasha didn’t reply, she wasn’t even sure what she meant by that. “Nat, you’re like my sister. I’m never gonna think ‘a you like that.”

“I’m just saying it’s funny you’re the only man on earth that’s never looked at me twice. Maybe Hydra cut one too many wires.”

“Why’re you pickin’ a fight?!” shouted Bucky.

“I don’t know!” replied Natasha.

“Well stop it! We’re both stressed, doesn’t give you the right to pick at old wounds!”

“What old wounds?!”

“Nevermind that!”

“Stop screaming,” snapped Natasha. Bucky, who clearly had a comeback in the chamber, huffed and turned on his side away from Natasha. “Are you pouting?”

“Leave me alone for a minute.”

“No. You’re 56 years old, you can’t throw a tantrum.”

“Hey, in biological years I’m only 26—“

“Yeah and mental years you’re not a day over 18!”

“Now who’s screaming.”

Natasha groaned and shuffled into the bathroom to get dressed. It had been a while since they bickered, it only ever happened outside of missions when they’d spent too much time together. One would start a fight to get the both of them a few days without the other. It was easy for them too. Bucky knew what upset Natasha and vice versa. A fight between them escalated quickly and rarely ever deescalated until they’d had a few days to calm down. But that kind of time frame wouldn’t exist for them in the near future so she had to be the bigger person.

“Buck,” called Natasha as she meandered out of the bathroom and back to Bucky’s side. To her surprise, he had abandoned pouting to read. “What’re you doing?”

“Reading about Howard Stark,” said Bucky. His mood had shifted and he was no longer in need of the apology Natasha had lined up. “Did you know he had a fling with this Italian during the war.”

“So what?” Natasha sat on the bed and shimmied into the covers. “Lots of men cheated on their wives—actually he wasn’t married then was he? So what’s the problem?”

“A fling with some guy named ‘Anthony’. He named his son after him.”

Natasha’s face heated up, she couldn’t help it. She knew Howard too personally to not react. “Why does S.H.I.E.L.D. know about that anyway?”

“I guess it was relevant…Makes you wonder how much our files say…”

“Hey,” said Natasha with an urgency she’d tried to conceal. “Promise me now you won’t read what’s in my file.”

“Why? What’s in it?”

“Just promise me!”

“Fine, fine. But you’ve gotta promise me the same.”

“Deal. Now stop reading about other people, it’s an invasion of privacy.”

“Fine.” She heard and felt Bucky stashing the file-folder under the mattress. Seconds later, Bucky’s back was nestled against hers and the lamp was flicked off. “Still…it’s weird they had to include that in his file.”

“It’s not so weird. If he was with him throughout the war, he might know a few things he’s not supposed to I guess.”

“Well…it’s probably in the file ‘cause it’s… _ya know_.”

“Buck, if you’ve got a problem with it, stop talkin’ about it.”

“I don’t have a problem.”

“Then hush and go to bed,” snapped Natasha.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Four hours later, their alarm went off. Bucky crushed it on accident with his metal arm. He grumbled in the bedsheets while Natasha got dressed and prodded him to wake the hell up. Half of Bucky was a trained killer, but the other half was the Bucky everyone knew and loved and getting him to remain in his ‘trained killer’ state for the entirety of a mission was often futile.

“Buck, the train leaves in a few hours, we gotta get a head start.”

“I’m not a child, I can wake myself up,” said Bucky into his pillow.

“Then do it!”

Ripping the bedsheets off of him did the trick. He glared at her his entire shuffle into the bathroom but he was getting dressed. Natasha packed for them both and strapped any and all of her weapons somewhere on her person. Hidden under in jacket, strapped to her ankles, and one on her hip. Last on her list was retrieving the file. She lifted the upper corner of the mattress and pulled it from the flimsy bedframe.

She told Bucky not to pry, but she had to read the segment about Howard herself. It wasn’t really an invasion of privacy if she already knew all the information anyway. She flipped to his picture and scanned through the pages upon pages of information on him.

‘Stark was involved with an Italian civilian, Anthony Dioli, beginning and ending in 1943. Dioli was present on Armed Forces premises multiple times, including visits to intelligence offices available only to those with clearance.’

She wasn’t sure what she had expected but it certainly wasn’t that. A year long affair reduced to two sentences. It made her hopeful to peruse her own file. Maybe one or two of her indiscretions had been kept short and simple and easily digestible by anyone who happened upon it. After all if they could make Stark’s double life sound as dull as every other shred of clerical paperwork, there was a chance for her.

Her file loomed on her peripheral vision for a few seconds before she finally flipped to it. She was present for her entire life give or take a few years, she was more than aware of everything that would be listed in the file and yet she felt nervous. Her eyes scanned and found that her biggest mistakes had also been reduced to a few sentences chocked full of the bare minimum of information necessary. And yet she didn’t feel any better about it. After all, she’d extrapolated a lot from the two sentences fed to her from Howard’s file. On paper her life was relatively tidy but anyone who read it would know that wasn’t the case.

“What are you doing?” snapped Bucky. Natasha flinched and slammed the file shut. “We’re you reading my file?”

“No, I was reading my own,” replied Natasha.

“Then why’d you flinch?”

“You surprised me. I already swore I wouldn’t read it, remember?”

“If you read mine, I get to read yours,” demanded Bucky. He made a move to grab the file from Natasha but she dodged in time.

“I didn’t read yours!” He swiped at her again and nearly knocked the folder from her arms. “Fine, if you read mine I read yours!”

“You swear you didn’t read it?!”

“Yes!” Natasha held eye contact for a few moments to drive her point home. Bucky eventually faltered. “Jesus. What’s in there that’s such a big secret?”

“It’s a secret, dumbass,” spat Bucky. He unpacked and refolded everything Natasha had already done for him out of sheer immature spite.

“I know you had some rough years in Hydra, but that’s nothing to do with you,” began Natasha, trying to mend a few fences before they got on a train together.

“Wanna talk about your file?” asked Bucky.

“No.”

“Alright then shut up about mine. Are you ready to go?”

“I’ve been ready,” Natasha shoved the file folder into her bag.

“I’ve been ready,” repeated Bucky in a mocking tone.

Natasha rolled her eyes and walked a few paces in front of Bucky on their way to the front office. Natasha let the door close on Bucky, and made her way to the front desk with her key in hand.

“Thank you—“ began Natasha.

“There’s a call for you,” interrupted the woman. “Sorry, but she’s being very insistent.”

“Oh…Okay,” said Natasha. The woman handed the receiver over the counter and silently excused herself. “Hello?”

“ _Hello,_ ” said Peggy. Her voice was far calmer than Natasha had anticipated. Bucky pointed to the phone, she mouthed back ‘Peggy’ and watched the blood drain from his face. “ _How did you two sleep_?”

“Just fine, ma’am,” replied Natasha.

“ _The hotel S.H.I.E.L.D. supplied for you wasn’t to your liking?_ ” said Peggy.

“You’re stalling,” said Natasha.

“ _Stalling? Romanoff, you think I’m sending someone to get_ you?”

“You have people who can bring us in. Steve’s still there isn’t he?” Natasha looked up at Bucky who mimed his throat being cut and nearly hung the phone up for her. She swatted him away just in time.

“ _You and Barnes have gone rogue. Barnes has a…certain circumstance with Steve Rogers. I know he’s counting on that circumstance to keep him safe from harsh punishments like it has in the past. You aren’t so lucky, Natasha. And if this continues, he won’t be so lucky either. I’m willing to forgive this lapse in judgement between the two of you if you head to the airport now.”_

“Who is Meyer? Who is he really?” said Natasha. Peggy went silent on the other end.

“ _A German politician. Like we told you.”_

“Do you really think we’re going to believe that?”

_“The airport is five miles northwest of your current location. It’s hard to miss in that minuscule town you’ve found yourselves in. The plane leaves in an hour.”_

Natasha slammed the phone down. Her hand stayed glued to the receiver for a few seconds while she processed what she’d done, what was to come.

“So are they on our tail?” asked Bucky.

Natasha shook her head. “They’re giving us another chance to go back. They’ll only start going after us once we don’t get on the plane they have waiting…”

“Nat…” began Bucky. “Nat, we can stop. We can tap out. I don’t wanna risk everything you’ve built up for yourself because of a stupid hunch I had—“

“You think I’m so weak that I was swayed into deserting based on your hunch,” interrupted Natasha. “What you said had and has merit and this is how we have to do it or it won’t get done at all. We’ve got a train to catch.”

“They know where we are. They’ll just stop the train and drag us back for a trial.”

“You make it sound like we’re going without a fight.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

They took a cab to the train station. They kept their faces behind sunglasses and avoided any real interaction with the driver. Natasha bought the train tickets while Bucky watched her back. The pair sat on the benches by the terminal. It was a strange time to need a train from Georgia to Virginia, and a long ride at that. The only other people that scattered the terminal were likely not joining them. No one else would be joining them at all if they were lucky.

They had time before the train came to decompress. Natasha thought it all through one more time and decided once again that this was the only surefire method of getting to Meyer without the files getting leaked to the public. But part of it felt expected. After all, Meyer hadn’t fought them at all in their efforts to steal back the filefolders, in fact he’d aided them. He knew what they looked like, he knew who they were, and he helped them. Something about what they were doing felt like a trap, like they were doing exactly what Meyer was hoping. But Natasha couldn’t distinguish between her own original plan and what was what Meyer was hoping she’d come up with. Thanks to the files, he knew everything about her, he could predict her every movement if he studied hard enough.

“Hey Buck,” said Natasha. She sat up a bit straighter. Bucky did the same.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you think they know we’re getting on this train?”

“Who’s they?”

“Meyer and his guys, whoever they are,” said Natasha. She left the panicking to Bucky most of the time but sometimes it blind sided her. Bucky kept his arm across her shoulders and squeezed.

“Nat, there’s no way they could’ve predicted that. We didn’t even know which train we were takin’ until we got here. They’re smart, not clairvoyant.”

“I guess.”

“I know.”

“But S.H.I.E.L.D. knew where we were.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. knows us really well and they had a whole night to track us—“

“Buck, did you look through your file at all?”

He retracted the arm he had around her shoulder. “I know what’s in it, I don’t need it read back to me.”

“There’s a lot of detail in there. If he did his homework he knows us almost as well as S.H.I.E.L.D. does, well enough to know that this is the train we’re taking.”

“Then they know us well enough to know that we’d figure it out and not board the train. Which means we should get on. Either way we take this train to Virginia.”

“You’re not thinking it through—“

“You’re over thinking it! You’re working yourself up for no reason.”

The train sped into the station. Bucky stood and slung his bag over his shoulder. When Natasha didn’t stand with him, he slung her bag over his other shoulder. 

“Nat, we’re gonna be fine. We can’t walk all the way to Lehigh.”

“We can fly there,” said Natasha as the train opened its doors and boarded two other people. “Meyer’s expecting us to get on this train and go to Virginia, he’s probably waiting for us there already. He’d never expect us to rejoin S.H.I.E.L.D..”

“Twenty minutes ago you said that this gets done by us or not at all and now you’re just gonna trust S.H.I.E.L.D. to handle it all of the sudden?”

“No, but I trust us to fly to Lehigh.”

“You wanna hijack S.H.I.E.L.D.’s plane? Do you know how much worse you’re making this whole thing. Not only did we desert but now we’re actively attacking—“

“We can’t get on that train and I don’t know of any quicker way to get to Lehigh, do you?”

Bucky thought for a moment in complete silence, his eyes never left Natasha’s.

“Okay….hypothetically if we were to get on the jet, how good of a pilot are you?” asked Bucky.

“Excellent,” replied Natasha.

“Well then I guess we better hurry to the tarmac.”

Natasha sprung up and took her bag from Bucky. “I could kiss you, Barnes.”

“Please don’t.”

“It’s an expression, dickhead.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

A second cab brought them to the relatively empty tarmac. The city, or really town, they were in didn’t have many visitors. The airport S.H.I.E.L.D. had parked their jet in was borderline empty with very few employees around to tell them they weren’t allowed on the tarmac. They picked up a buggy and drove to the opposite end of the expansive airfield. Too expansive considering the population, which made it the perfect spot for S.H.I.E.L.D..

An agent waved them down near the jet they were supposed to be taken home in.

“What’s the plan?” asked Bucky.

“Just get them off the plane before it takes off.”

“You promise you can fly that thing?”

“Mostly.”

“Mostly?! Nat—“

“I can’t take off.”

“Fine…we’ll work around it. But once we’re in the air you’re a regular ace right?”

Natasha nodded, not sure if she meant it. She had flown before. She was thirteen at the time and the situation had been so dire that no one cared about her choppy crash landing. She’d flown since but only as a copilot to a more qualified pilot. But she’d faked her way through worse situations, one little plane couldn’t be that much of a hassle.

“Glad to see you two back,” said the agent as Natasha pulled up in the buggy.

“Back?” mumbled Bucky to Natasha.

“Yeah,” interrupted the agent, “Agent Carter said you two got into it a little back in Alabama. I mean we all knew the two of _you_ would be fine but—“

“You’re rambling, kid,” said Bucky. The agent, who couldn’t have been more than four years Bucky’s junior apologized and had the jet’s stairs pulled down. Bucky lead and Natasha followed him up and into the jet. The agent was the last on, he and the pilot got the stairs sealed again. Natasha was well adept at keeping her nerves internal and never letting any hint of them show. But hijacking a plane off of S.H.I.E.L.D. was risky even for her. S.H.I.E.L.D. had given her her new lease on life and her freedom essentially. To betray them so forcefully in the hopes that her conclusion was right was risky, to say the very least.

“Alright, should be a smooth hour and a half flight up to Washington,” said the pilot. He grumbled up to the cockpit. Natasha and Bucky settled into their seats.

“So how was the trek from Alabama to Georgia? Rough I bet.” The young agent sat on the edge of his seat waiting for a response. It was as if he thought Natasha and Bucky were starlets and he was getting a backstage pass.

“We walked twelve miles through a sewer,” replied Bucky.

“Wow,” said the agent with wide eyes.

“What’s your name?” asked Natasha.

“Ronnie. I’m actually from the same area of Brooklyn that you and Captain Rogers are from,” said Ronnie.

“Really.” Bucky didn’t even try to sound interested.

The plane geared up for take off and was speeding down the runway in seconds. Ronnie’s leg wouldn’t stop bouncing, his fingers wouldn’t stop edging along the seam of the vinyl seat.

“Planes make you nervous?” said Natasha. Ronnie laughed and nodded.

“I just can’t ever get used to being up this high.”

“Have we leveled?” called Bucky up to the cockpit.

“Five more minutes about,” replied the pilot.

“Y-ya know,” stammered Ronnie through his nerves. “Ya know how everyone’s gearin’ up for the President’s ball? Well I heard that the princesses might come.”

“The princesses?” laughed Bucky. “What are they, like fifteen?”

“It’s…1976 sir, they’re in their thirties,” replied Ronnie. “I just hope they let agents of my clearance go. I know we’ve gotta impress the president and all that so I won’t be surprised if I don’t get invited but I’d really love to meet Princess Margaret.”

“You’re rambling, son,” groaned Bucky.

Natasha stood to get one of the ginger ales from the back of the plane. Since it was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s it was well stocked with everything they’d need. Namely, parachutes. Natasha rummaged for her ‘ginger ale’ for a few minutes while she located the parachutes and made a game plan. Grabbing the pilot would be the hardest part. He was strapped in twice.

No, releasing the doorway would be the hardest. The pilot _and_ Ronnie could stop them before they ever got started. They needed to get everything ready _before_ they made a move for the door.

“Have we leveled?” asked Bucky again.

“Yeah, should be only an hour and a half of flying, we’ve got a good tail wind,” said the pilot. Bucky turned to look at Natasha who set her ginger ale back down and strode towards the cock pit. She settled behind the pilot’s seat and rested her hands on his shoulders.

“Look out for that flock of geese,” said Natasha, pointing to the pilot’s left. In the brief moment of his distraction, she snaked her hands around him and pressed the release for his seat belts. He was a young man, maybe ten years her senior. He was thin, lanky and easy to yank from the pilot’s seat. Bucky was right there to catch him while Natasha took over the captain’s seat.

“You can fly it right?” asked Bucky over the pilot’s struggling.

“I can fly it, ’til then we gotta drop ‘em…I just gotta find the auto.” She raked her eyes over the control panel before finding the little ‘auto’ switch. “Alright, let’s get it done."

Bucky dragged the pilot into the main cabin. Natasha followed. Ronnie wasn’t bound but he was weaponless and terrified thanks to Bucky.

“Two parachutes in the rear,” said Natasha.

“You’re not gonna just heave us out are you?” said the pilot. Since Bucky and Natasha were S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, even though it was mutiny in a way, the pilot was more annoyed than he was scared. Ronnie on the other hand was shaking, damn near pissing himself.

“You’re gonna throw us out?!”

Natasha rolled her eyes and retrieved the two parachutes. Before she could hand one off to Bucky to dress the pilot, the phone rang. When it did, Ronnie froze. His shaking, his crying, his begs for mercy all came to a screeching halt.

“Who is that calling?” asked Natasha. Ronnie stayed frozen and avoided her gaze.

“He must’ve pressed a fuckin’ panic button when my back was turned,” grumbled Bucky. “Might as well answer it.”

Natasha lifted the hotline off of the wall. “Peggy?”

_“Hi Nat, it’s Howard.”_

“It’s Howard this time,” said Natasha to Bucky.

 _“So, good ol’ Ronnie pressed our panic button. Our tracker says there aren’t any other planes for miles so…why did good ol’ Ronnie press the panic button?”_ asked Howard. Natasha wrung her hand around the receiver and clenched her teeth. _“Peggy told me you two are…glitching. It’s forgivable if you get home on that plane. With the other passengers intact. It’s all forgivable until then, Nat.”_

“Who is Meyer? Who is he really?”’

_“Goddamn it, Romanoff! You’re on a rookie mission not a governmental overthrow here! What the fuck does it matter to you what kind of politician Meyer is?! He’s German, he’s got our secrets! That’s all you fuckin’ need to know!”_

“What’s he saying?” asked Bucky. He had the pilot strapped into his parachute. Ronnie was still refusing to uncurl from his ball which made the parachute-dressing process harder but not impossible.

“Howard, we didn’t give you all of the files. I’ll tell you what was in them if you tell me all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s information on Meyer.”

 _“Natasha…”_ began Howard. _“Natasha that’s a real problem. I can’t…let that one go. You can’t steal information from S.H.I.E.L.D., you just can’t do that.”_

“It’s not stolen. You’ll get it once we’re done. Or right now if you tell me who Meyer really is.”

_“That plane better land in D.C. in an hour and a half.”_

The line went dead. Natasha took a few breaths before hanging up the receiver. Bucky stared at her hoping for good news. She shook her head in response and he quietly continued strapping Ronnie in tight to his parachute.

“Don’t worry, kid. I’ve done this a thousand times, it’s nothin’,” said Bucky in Ronnie’s ear.

“What if I pass out and never pull my chute?” said Ronnie through tears.

“I’m strappin’ you to the pilot, you’ll be fine.” He dragged Ronnie by his parachute to the pilot where he secured them together. The pilot squeezed Ronnie’s shoulders in a futile effort to quiet his incessant crying. “Time to open the hatch, Nat.”

“Alright, hold something.”

Natasha stretched the copilot’s seat belt as far as it would go and tied it to her waist. Once she was sure she wouldn’t fly out of the plane, she turned the handle on the hatch and heaved it towards her with all of her strength and let the stairs fall. Bucky was strapped into his regular seat with a regular seatbelt. A big kick from him had the pilot-Ronnie combo reeling towards and out of the opening. Natasha never saw the chute open but she knew it must have.

“Okay come help me get it back in!” shouted Natasha over the deafening din of wind. She could only heave it back in a few inches at a time thanks to the speed of the plane. It took Bucky’s metal arm to get it secured back in. Which meant Natasha had to hold onto him for dear life while he flailed trying to get a grip on the stairs. The silence that came when it was finally sealed again was as comforting as it was unsettling.

“You hair looks like shit,” said Bucky with a characteristic smile.

“Be serious.”

“No. What’d Stark say?”

She shrugged. “Wouldn’t give anything up about Meyer. Do you think maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t actually know anything about him?”

“Of course I don’t, and neither do you. They’re obviously hiding something or they wouldn’t be doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Letting us come back.” Bucky followed Natasha to the cockpit and sat in the copilot’s seat. “Think about it. They can’t kill us—well they can’t kill me—without having to admit they killed an american symbol of…something. Steve would throw a fit—he’d probably throw one for you too. They’d rather imprison us. But they’re not doing that. They’re letting us come back, giving us chance after chance even after we went AWOL.”

“Them giving us chances is just ‘cause we’re top agents. It’s a hassle to lose us and because of your friendship with Steve they can know for sure we’re not Hydra. Their patience is gonna run out,” said Natasha. She took a deep breath and switch off the autopilot. The plane dipped when she did and shocked her into taking the reins. It was just as she remembered it. Terrifying, uncertain, and difficult.

“No think about it,” said Bucky after he’d recovered from the sudden nose dive. “If they knew we were wrong, if they knew we had just lost our minds, they’d have Steve or someone come get us and throw us in a pokey. But they didn’t because they know we’re on to something. They want us to come back on our own terms so when they have to apologize for keeping us in the dark it’ll feel more genuine.”

“That’s quite a far reach you’ve got there, Barnes.”

“I’m right. S.H.I.E.L.D. knows everything about Meyer and they didn’t tell us before we went in to…test something. I don’t know what but they know we know. They know we’re really onto something.”

“You’ve been reading too many spy novels.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“Okay, Lehigh’s in ten minutes, land…anywhere you can,” said Bucky. He’d slept most of the flight over which left Natasha to panic as warning lights came on every few minutes for no apparent reason.

“We can’t just land anywhere.”

“Why? It’s not that big a plane, Nat.”

“I turned the radio off. Howard was tracking us so I had to. If I turn it back on to ask for clearance they’ll know where we are.”

Bucky sat up in his seat and sighed. “Then…just find a flat piece of land. S.H.I.E.L.D. will pay for damages when we sort this out.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Sure you can,” said Bucky in an optimistic voice. “You’re _the_ Natasha Romanoff.”

“I can’t do it,” replied Natasha with gritted teeth.

“You’ve done it before haven’t you? A regular landing I mean.”

She stayed perfectly still and could feel Bucky’s judgmental eyes boring into her skull. “You…You made me hijack a plane because you swore you could fly it—“

“I crash landed once. It was pretty good for a crash landing but it was on easy terrain.”

“Well…I guess that’s what we’re gonna have to do. Get lower.”

“We’ll die.”

“How’d you survive the first time you did this?” asked Bucky.

“I crashed into water. The plane just…skipped over the ocean for a few miles before it stopped,” said Natasha. It dawned on her that maybe they didn’t need to do this. Maybe they could’ve just waited another day and taken a different train. Hell, they could’ve gone to a different city, a different state and taken a passenger plane or train. They didn’t _have_ to hijack a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane, she didn’t _have_ to prove her nonexistent flight skills.

“Okay well…We—Nat…is that the fuel gauge?” Bucky tapped his finger against one of the beeping lights.

“I don’t know, is it?”

“Says fuel is low…”

“We only had enough to get to D.C.,” said Natasha.

“We had a good tail wind though,” added Bucky hopefully.

“We’re a good three hundred miles passed where we were supposed to land.”

“Okay…” said Bucky.

“Okay…” repeated Natasha.

Each was working hard to find a solution before the inevitable found them. But nothing was coming to her. She didn’t know how to land other than to fly towards the ground and pray. She knew Bucky didn’t have any flying experience except as a passenger so they were stuck. The air is not a good place to be stuck.

“Nat just…just get real low, put the wheels down, do the thing with the flaps—just get really low and really slow and aim for the hills,” said Bucky as he unbuckled his seatbelt.

“Where are you going?” She tried to hide the panic in her voice.

“Do it, get us low and slow.”

“We’ll die, Buck. It’s not a movie. We’ll die if we crash land into the side of a mountain.”

“We’re out of options, Nat. I’m gonna get our bags. I think if we cram into the bathroom, curl up, we’ll be…at the very least, alive.”

He left her side in a huff. He had the right to be pissy, Natasha had gotten them both killed in the most agonizingly slow way. But he was right. Any chance of survival was at the back of the plane. She got low. Real low. The plane slowed. She let the wheels down and felt them hit and rip against the foliage below.

“Nat, hurry!” called Bucky. She wrestled herself out of her seat and ran to the back of the plane. Bucky had padded the little bathroom cubicle with their bags. The two of them barely fit. They could only get the door shut when Bucky wrapped around her. “I think my arm and all that serum’ll come through for us this time.”

Natasha felt the plane dip without her there to correct it. “I’m sorry, Bucky. I thought I could do it.”

“What do you have to be sorry about,” said Bucky with a laugh. “I’ve died before, once more’s not gonna kill me.”

“You can stop making jokes,” said Natasha.

“If you don’t laugh you cry,” said Bucky.

“I’ve almost died plenty of times, it’s no place for tears.”

“Even on your deathbed you’re still the perfect agent, huh?” teased Bucky.

Before Natasha could add anything else the plane hit stopped coasting over the air and started colliding. Bucky held her a little tighter as it continued towards the ground. From what Natasha was looking at before she’d abandoned the cock pit, they were hitting lots and lots of trees which she hoped would slow them down significantly before they made contact and officially crashed.

The lights died and the turbulence got worse but the plane didn’t feel any slower. She began to wonder if maybe the plane had veered off and away from the cliffside and they would never hit, they’d just coast gently until the plane came to a calm stop. Those dreams were dashed when the entire plane and all of its contents lurched forward as the plane buckled and folded and crashed head-on into the cliffside.


	2. Chapter 2

 

* * *

 

 

“Nat? Nat? Nat, come on, wake up.”

Natasha opened her eyes and saw the sky.

“We lived?” Her voice sounded hoarse, even for her.

“You slammed your head really hard into my arm, knocked you out cold,” said Bucky. His right hand reached over and forced her eyes open beyond a squint. “No concussion though.”

“You’re okay?”

“I’m a super soldier remember?” He grinned as wide as his mouth would let him. The longer she stared the more prominent the tear tracks on his cheeks became. “Nat, you didn’t even break anything! We’re really okay!”

“That’s good.” A few tears fell from her eyes down to her ears. Bucky rolled his eyes and wiped them away.

“You don’t have to cry, we’re fine—“

“I know I just…I shouldn’t have done that to you. You’ve got more of a real life than me and I took it—“

“We’re equally responsible for everything, we’re a team remember. Now, I did a very rudimentary test so make _extra sure_ you’re not paralyzed or anything.”

She took his help in sitting up and demonstrated that she could in fact move all of her limbs. It was then that she got the lay of the land so to speak. The plane, no more then 500 feet away was demolished against the cliffside. There was no part of it that was recognizable as an aircraft. She couldn’t even decipher where Bucky had pulled the two of them out of.

“Ya know,” said Bucky as he rotated one of Natasha’s knees, “you scared me. I couldn’t find you pulse for a good minute there.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m just glad you’re back. We’re about a mile from a truckstop…I assume, I can’t be sure but there’s a highway nearby so we’ll see. I say we steal a car outta there and drive the rest of the way to Lehigh. Can you walk?”

“Hey.” Natasha patted her sides and her ankles. “Where’d you put my guns?”

“They’re in the bag, I stashed ‘em along with the first aid kit I found on the plane. But you’re not gonna need ‘em to steal the car, we’re gonna be very civil about this okay?"

Natasha nodded and took Bucky’s hand to be hoisted on her feet. Her legs were still a little shaky but who wouldn’t be. Bucky carried both of their bags as they meandered their way through the woods in search of the truck stop.

Natasha had long been considered the better agent. She was far more lucid than Bucky had ever been in her training, she was more aware of what she was doing, she had more muscle memory, she knew more. And sometimes being the perfect agent still wasn’t enough. It was her who couldn’t fly, her who had crashed the plane, and her who couldn’t carry her own damn bag. If she had been given the serum, and a few minutes to look over a flight tutorial she could’ve been the perfect agent everyone always pinned her as.

“I see it!” Bucky broke into a sprint, Natasha did her best to follow without her knees giving in. “Okay, let’s just wait for this guy pulling to get out for the bathroom.”

“I’ll drive,” said Natasha.

“Eh…”

“You need a break, I already got mine.”

“Being knocked out isn’t exactly taking a nap, Nat.”

“You need a break.”

“Alright, fine but if you wanna trade I’ll trade.”

Natasha sidled up to the car and went to jimmy the lock but found the driver had not only left it unlocked but running. Bucky silently cheered and jumped in the passenger seat. Before he’d even closed the door Natasha was peeling out. A few people looked their way but none yelled, none tried to stop them, and then they were on the road.

“We didn’t even have to hotwire it,” said Bucky. “Our luck’s changin’!”

“Yeah,” said Natasha trying not to sound too disappointed. She’d never had to prove herself to Bucky who thought the sun shone out her ass, but to herself. Getting cold feet, not planning the motel, the train, hijacking a plane she didn’t know how to fly, it was all completely unacceptable.

“That’s _good_ , Nat. You’re such a downer sometimes,” teased Bucky.

“This car’s almost out of gas,” groaned Natasha. “Maybe our luck’s not changing.”

“Just get it really low and slow and we’ll crash it into the nearest hillside,” laughed Bucky. Natasha couldn’t help but crack a smile. “Nat, you need to…I don’t know…lighten up but permanently. You’re too stressed for your own good.”

“Hey…Buck, get the filefolder out.”

Bucky reached into the backseat and fished the filefolder out of Natasha’s bag. “You finally gonna let me read about the agents? ‘Cause I _really_ wanna know a few things in Steve’s—“

“No, I want you to read mine.”

“What?” muttered Bucky though a fading laugh.

“I owe it to you. I almost got you killed because I wasn’t smart enough to think through the paranoia back at the train. I mean what kind of idiot _suggests_ hijacking?” A few beats of silents filled the car as the weight of what Natasha had _almost_ done to Bucky settled in. “I think at this point you’re owed this, you deserve to know what I’m actually capable of. You don’t need to take me at my word anymore ‘cause it obviously doesn’t mean all that much.”

“Nat…One mistake—“

“One fatal mistake—“

“We lived!”

“Barely! If you weren’t superhuman we’d be dead! I nearly was! I just…” she took a few breaths to avoid yelling anymore, “I just want you to read it. Meyer, an enemy German, knows more about me than my own partner.”

“I know plenty about you. The whole story…y’know it just doesn’t matter all that much. We’ve both done some things we wished we hadn’t—I don’t need your ‘spy’ resume.”

“Read it.”

“Fine, but this doesn’t change how I think of you okay?”

Bucky flipped through the file folder to her picture and adjusted in his seat before he began. It was agony sitting in silence knowing the kinds of atrocities Bucky was having to read. She didn’t have it easy like him, she didn’t have the excuse of total darkness. She knew what she was doing when she was doing it. Being unable to tell the difference between normal and her life didn’t make what she did any more forgivable. To S.H.I.E.L.D. it did, to her psychiatrist it did, but it never would to her.

“What part are you at?” barked Natasha when she just couldn’t handle it anymore.

“I’m just read about São Paolo.”

“The hospital fire?”

“Nat, it was a mercy kill—“

“To save them from a fire I started!”

“This—This stuff, Nat. It doesn’t define—“

“It defines my skill as an agent. Everything in that folder is why S.H.I.E.L.D. hired me for the field instead of sticking me behind a desk. It matters.”

“Well there’s a reason they put us together. Everything in here might as well be in mine.”

They drove in silence for another thirty minutes while Bucky read over her entire file. Natasha knew it was a lot to take in and didn’t interrupt again. Her whole history was too much even for her some days so she would rather not know what Bucky was really thinking about all her kills. At the thirty minute mark he closed the folder and mumbled that he was done but the silence continued. It didn’t stop until Natasha pulled into a gas station to refuel.

“I’m gonna go inside and get us some food,” said Bucky.

“With what money?” replied Natasha.

“We’ve still got like two hundred in petty cash.”

“Alright. Tell the cashier to stop the pump at like twenty bucks.”

“A full tank?”

“I’m not risking it.”

Bucky headed inside while Natasha started refueling. Her mind began racing as usual as she leant against the beat up old Pinto. After so many years of having a perpetually racing mind she was fantastic at clearing it. So she focused on the damage. If the pilot or Ronnie had broken anything on their descent, she and Bucky would be responsible. She wasn’t going to venture into the ‘what if’s of their potential deaths. They’d have to pay for the plane too. If they didn’t do any damage to the car, S.H.I.E.L.D. would probably pay the owner his fair share of compensation. That was the best case scenario. Those were the damages if and only if they proved themselves right about. About what?

Meyer was up to something given the night they’d met him, but so far there was no real proof that it was sinister. If he was Hydra, they’d need S.H.I.E.L.D. to back them up in the final firefight. If he wasn’t then there was a good chance she’d nearly killed herself and Bucky for no real reason.

The tank filled and Natasha replaced the pump. It read that they had four dollars left over so she headed inside to retrieve it. She swung the door open to find that the inside was even hotter than the outside somehow. Only three wall mounted fans were installed to keep the little convenience store cool and they weren’t working.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” said the woman behind the counter.

“Hi, I need the change from the second pump please.”

“Oh are you with that guy?” She sprung open the register and began counting out the four dollars in quarters.

“Yeah, he’s my older brother. We’re visiting our parents,” said Natasha. “Can I get that in bills.”

“I would but we’ve only got a few left.” She continued counting out the quarters.

“Where is my brother anyway?”

“He had to take a phone call in the back, right through here,” said the woman. “Sounded important.”

“I better go check,” said Natasha.

It made no sense. She turned off any incoming or outgoing transmissions on the plane. For all S.H.I.E.L.D. knew the plane had fallen out of the sky the moment Natasha took the reigns. How could Peggy or Howard have known that they were in Jersey, that they were at a gas station.

She let herself into the back office and sure enough found Bucky with his ear to a receiver.

“Stevie, it was a minor crash. We’re both fine. S.H.I.E.L.D. won’t pronounce us dead without bodies but just so you know, we’re both fine…” said Bucky. Natasha had never felt rage fill in her as quickly as it had. Rage was an emotion she typically didn’t experience, it was too reckless and wild to fit an agent. “I’ll be home soon, I just _know_ we’re onto something here and—No—No I do trust Peggy I just think that I need to do this for her—“

“Hang. That. Up.”

Bucky turned around. His face drained of all color.

“Um…I’ve gotta go now but…yeah me too. Bye,” said Bucky as he hung the receiver up.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing calling Steve?!” said Natasha in as harsh a whisper as she could muster.

“I—I had to, Nat!” replied Bucky.

“We’re going. Now.”

She stormed out of the back office and the convenience store. She could feel Bucky behind her with his tail between his legs. Every move she made was sharp and tense. The anger in the pit of her stomach was reaching every muscle in her body and it showed when she nearly broke the key off in the ignition. She slammed the gas pedal down and screeched out of the gas station before she began yelling.

“Nat—“

“Steve?! You fucking called Steve in the middle of _this_?! Do you want us to get caught?! Do you want us to get court-martialed?! Do you want Meyer to get away with whatever it is he’s doing because?! Because what Buck, you miss your friend?!” screamed Natasha once they were safely on the road and away from prying ears.

“No I…He’d panic if he heard from the grapevine that we’d hijacked a plane and crashed it. He’d think I—he’d think we were dead and I didn’t wanna worry him—“

“It could’ve waited! It could’ve waited until we were safe!”

“He’s not gonna snitch—“

“His phone’s probably tapped you asshole! S.H.I.E.L.D. probably knows we’re in Jersey which means they know we’re trying to get to Lehigh because you _had_ to say hi to your fuckin friend!”

“Nat, shut the fuck up!” screamed Bucky. “You don’t—You don’t get it so shut up!”

“What the fuck don’t I get?! I’m scared too! Don’t you think I wanna run home cryin’ to Steve and Sam and Sharon?! But I know better! I would never jeopardize your safety because I’m sacred!"

“But you’d jeopardize it to prove you’re a good pilot, right Captain Romanoff?!”

Natasha stopped yelling and Bucky did too. They drove in complete silence the rest of the way to Lehigh.

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

“This is it up here,” said Bucky after an hour of silence. “We’ve gotta ditch the car, I’m sure everyone’s on high alert for the two of us.”

“They might not be, things move a little slower down at the Lehigh branch.”

Natasha pulled the car off to the side of the road a little under a mile before the main gate that led to the training camp the Lehigh base was set in.

“We can leave our shit in the car, they’re not gonna find it before we get back,” said Bucky.

“Okay, but I’m taking my guns,” said Natasha as she strapped her belts to herself again. One under each arm, one on her thigh, one on her left ankle. Just enough.

“We’re not gonna need those—“

“If we do, you’ll be sorry. Can you get us into the base?”

“I lived here for three months, I think I can figure it out. Hey put your access-badge on, we don’t want them stopping us to ask questions.”

“You think that’ll work? Yeah, they’ll know we’re S.H.I.E.L.D. but they’ll also know it’s _us_.”

“You got a better idea?”

Natasha grumbled and clipped her ID badge to her shirt. She turned the car off and the two of them meandered through the sparsely wooded area surrounding the base in search of the ‘in’ that Bucky needed. Bucky hadn’t actually been to Lehigh since 1941, so thirty five years had passed. Natasha still trusted him to find the way in but couldn’t help but be on high alert for traps.

The fence surrounding the place was electric. They found that out when Bucky touched it. They also found out that his arm was powerful enough to short circuit the fence before the fence short circuited his arm. Without wasting time, they crawled under the newly-not-electric fence and immediately tried to blend in.

Bucky’s face wasn’t easily recognized if his arm wasn’t showing which thankfully it wasn’t. Natasha was usually only recognized if someone saw her hair. There was no time to dye it but putting it into a ponytail and putting on sunglasses would do the trick for the time being. They just had to act as natural as possible for as long as possible.

“Records room is in the weapons bunker,” said Natasha. “How do you suggest we get in.”

“Well, let’s get in the bunker before we try and get in the records room, we’ll figure it out.”

With the ID badges on they weren’t stopped once, not even to enter the main office in the weapons bunker. Other stressed agents gave them muttered hellos when the brushed past but everyone in the office was too busy to notice they’d walked in. Natasha knew the actual layout of the office a bit better than Bucky and lead them towards the sealed records room.

“Alright!” shouted Howard’s voice in the far corner of the office. Natasha pulled her and Bucky into the relative safety of the hallway that lead to the records room. She needed a minute to plan. “Barnes and Romanoff are still missing and none of you fuckfaces have found _one_ _trace_ of them!”

“Sir!” shouted a young agent who nearly tripped over his own feet when he burst through the door. “Sir, we found the plane!”

“Where is it?!” replied Howard. Natasha could only see the main door from her vantage point. Peeking around the corner was a risk she wasn’t willing to take.

“It’s…It’s crashed sir. A few hundred miles from here it’s…crashed.”

A the shuffling of papers and feet around the main office froze, the only sound breaking the silence was the phones. Natasha held her breath hoping no one would spot them in the lack of commotion.

“How bad?”

“It’s unrecognizable.”

Bucky leant down to whisper in her ear. “They’d miss us.”

Natasha ended the eavesdropping there and continued to the records room door. A young clerk was in charge of who got in and out. Natasha was too recognizable to speak to him so Bucky stepped up.

“Can I help you?” asked the clerk with a wide smile. He had a file open that he snapped shut before Bucky or Natasha could get a look at it.

“We need to access the Barnes-Romanoff file for Howard—Did you hear? They just found their plane crashed.”

“Oh, oh no,” said the clerk. “And right before the President’s Ball too, everyone was hoping to see Barnes there…Oh God and Captain Rogers ’s going to be so torn up. ”

“Why,” Bucky coughed, “why do you say that?”

“He’s close with Agent Barnes. When they went missing yesterday, he and Agent 13 were nearly in tears. I’d hate to be the one to give ‘em that news. Anyway, what can I help you with?"

“I…eh—we need to see the files on Romanoff and Barnes.”

The clerk laughed.

“No. You need clearance to see those.”

“We have it, we’re Howard’s assistants."

“Well if you have it then use it,” said the clerk. He pointed to the ID badge that hung from his shirt pocket. “This is what grants you permission, these days.”

“Oh…Really?” said Bucky. “So it—“

“It tracks everyone that goes in and out and exactly what file cabinets they access. If you don’t have clearance, when you swipe your ID badge, you don’t get access. I think it’s pretty neat.”

“Then aren’t you outta the job?” teased Bucky.

“This isn’t my actual job. I’m just pulling extra weight around here with the scare. I’m the records’ keeper not the doorman.”

“What do you do then?”

“I read all the files we get, organize ‘em, classify what needs to be redacted and record what I did.”

“So…you’ve already read the Barnes and Romanoff files,” asked Bucky. Natasha watched him grip the clerk’s desk too hard with his metal hand. She wasn’t sure exactly what he was so keen to keep hidden in his file but it wasn’t worth blowing their cover by accidentally ripping a table in half with his metal arm.

“I have, why?”

“You just—you’re allowed to just wander around here knowing everything you know?” said Bucky with too much force. The clerk nodded, completely ignoring Bucky’s hostility in favor of the work sprawled out in front of him. “So you know a lot about Barnes?”

“Everything that’s in his file. It’s not like I keep tabs, I just happen to know a few things.”

“Like what?”

“If you wanna know that, go check his file yourself—“

“If…” said Natasha. She still had to loiter behind Bucky so not to be recognized but the clerk’s nose was back to being buried in his work. “Sorry but…if this is so state of the art, how did—“

“Those files go missing.” The clerk sighed and sat back in his chair. He threw his glasses on his desk and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We didn’t account for an inside job is all. The Lehigh branch doesn’t keep any of the latest intel, it’s all at least a few months old. We didn’t expect to have to amp up security.”

“How did a fake agent get in there so easily, though?” asked Natasha.

“Like I said…” began the clerk. “I’m not the gatekeeper here. When I’m not redacting files, I’m making sure other people only take what they need. The guy that lifted those files he…I’d known him almost seven months, he was normal. He didn’t even have clearance to open the files he got, he was just a runner. Couple weeks ago I came in to add to the stockpile and…big empty space in the cabinet, and every record of what was in that entire chamber was gone.”

Bucky nodded sympathetically. Natasha, forgetting for a moment to stay hidden, pushed him aside to meet the clerk’s face.

“Did you say ‘files’? Plural?!” demanded Natasha.

The clerk looked behind the two of them and down the other hall before answering. “Between you and me, there’s way more than one file missing. There was a little communication breakdown in reporting the news to Agent Carter. They were under the impression that only one file had gone missing. The guy that stole ‘em, checked ‘em out with some files his superior really needed so we weren’t completely sure the amount he took but it wasn’t just one.”

“Did you ever tell Howard?” asked Bucky. The clerk was leaning in closer and closer and talking softer and softer.

“I did. Told him as soon as he came to check this place out himself. I guess he’s keeping it between him and the higher ups to keep panic down but…between you and me, I’m nearly one hundred percent sure that the files missing are all personnel files. Every record of what was in that chamber of the records room is gone so I had to go in by hand mark what everything left in there was and…I’m missing personnel files,” whispered the clerk.

“Howard knows?” said Natasha. The clerk nodded in response. “When did he know?”

“A week ago, maybe? The thing with him not announcing it…makes me worried this is something big.”

“Well,” began Bucky, “let us get whatever it is he needs. I’ll bet this isn’t anything in the end.”

The clerk sighed and replaced his glasses on the bridge of his nose. Natasha patted his shoulder sympathetically and on her way down swiped his ID badge. “Don’t get too worried, you’re doing a fine job."

“Thank you, ma’am,” mumbled the clerk as he unlocked the vault to the records room behind him. “Take your time. Oh also, the lights in there are pretty dim so theres a few flashlights on the table on the way in.”

Bucky and Natasha wore fake smiles as the clerk shut the vault door behind them and locked it. Natasha handed a flashlight off to Bucky before taking one for herself.

“Howard knew—that bastard,” whispered Bucky. “I told you—I told you they were keeping secrets from us, that’s why we haven’t been arrested on sight yet…That and they think we’re dead.”

“Focus, Buck. We’ve gotta find the map to this place,” whispered Natasha.

The room consisted of sixteen main chambers that formed a four by four grid of rooms. According to the guide they found by the main door, only the four rearmost chambers were restricted to those with clearance. Anything about Meyer was going to be in those rooms. Aside from that, the left most four chambers were missions, the two middle rows of four were various pieces of intel, and the final right-most row was the stockpile of personnel files. But a quick look at the tags on a few of the boxes showed that nothing was necessarily in the right place.

“Well, now we know why it took them so long to figure out what was missing,” said Bucky as he thumbed through a box of mission reports that were in the first ‘personnel’ chamber.

“I’ll bet the locked rooms at the back are a little more organized.”

“Yeah sure they are. You think he’s in intel or personnel?” asked Bucky.

“He doesn’t work for S.H.I.E.L.D., he can’t be in personnel,” groaned Natasha.

“Nat, this is a box of jeep invoices. There’s a chance his file’s in personnel.”

“He’s mostly intel,” insisted Natasha.

“Well, where is personnel-intel?”

“Let’s just search the ‘M’s in the back room.”

“Speaking of, I don’t think our IDs give us clearance—even if they did, if the system grants us access, it’ll pop up some where that we’re here and sound the alarm. I don’t know if you can pick a lock like—“

“Buck, I swiped the clerk’s ID, we’re fine. If all goes accordingly, no one’ll know we’ve been here until we’re gone, if at all. Now follow me.”

Natasha meandered through the towering shelves of boxes which, the further back through the chambers they went, turned to locked boxes and cabinets until finally they reached the furthest chamber marked ‘Intel A-P’.

“Does ‘M’ come before ‘P’, “ wondered Bucky aloud. Natasha rolled her eyes and swiped the ID badge. She held her breath waiting for the light to turn green and sighed a deep sigh of relief when it did. She turned the vault door’s handle and shoved it inward.

“Okay, you stand guard, I’m gonna find his file and see what we’re dealing with.”

“Hurry up, it’s eerie in here.”

A thorough search of the first locked room came up empty for any cabinet marked ‘M’ so they moved to the next room. Another search had them coming up empty. Natasha swallowed her pride and unlocked the ‘Personnel’ vault.

“Oh hey,” called Natasha as she scanned the cabinets. “Here’s the drawer your file went missing from. Personnel Ba-Bu.”

“Nat, hurry up, this place is creepy.”

“Creepy?” teased Natasha. “You’re a grown man, Barnes. You’re way too old to be afraid of the dark.”

“You’re way too old to be afraid of the dark,” repeated Bucky in a high pitched voice.

Natasha scanned the labels of each of the cabinets expecting to come up empty handed. But one last scan of the room via her flashlight found three lone cabinets labelled ‘Intel’. She rolled the stepladder over and climbed the first three steps to get a closer look. Sure enough, right between ‘Intel La-Lu’ and ‘Intel Oa-Pu’ was ‘Intel Ma-Mu’.

“Hey, Buck, I think I found it!” called Natasha in the general direction of the door.

“Grab it and lets go!”

She swiped the ID badge again and waited for the green light to tug on the drawer. Thumbing through each file got her heart going just that little bit faster. A hike through the sewers and a plane crash later and she was finally going to find out what the hell S.H.I.E.L.D. had been too scared to tell the two of them.

‘Meyer, Ernst’. The file nearly caught fire with how quick Natasha yanked it from the drawer. Her excitement was very quickly replaced with confusion. Her file was the standard size for an agent of her level. An inch thick. A normal politician would have maybe half of that. Though with all of the secrecy around Meyer she expected him to have at least a five pound file. Meyer’s file was maybe a half pound soaking wet. The file folder containing all of his information looked brand new it was so disused.

She opened the first page and landed in the middle of his political career. Page after page of his file, all documenting decisions made for his country, diplomats met at his parties, charities donated to, organizations a member of. But nothing else. His file began in 1966 when he campaigned. There was nothing prior. No birth year, hometown, next of kin, hell there wasn’t even a middle name written anywhere.

“Buck…” said Natasha. “Something’s wrong.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

Natasha flipped through the file on more time to be sure and, yes, no new information materialized. S.H.I.E.L.D. had the world’s top agents and no one could find Meyer before he made himself a public figure? No trace at all of his existence? He himself hadn’t even mention a childhood or adolescence, or parents for that matter. It was as if he just came into being for the sole purpose of running for office.

“Buck, come look—“ she was interrupted abruptly by the wind being knocked out of her. Blood splattered on the files in front of her but she couldn’t feel the source.

“Fuck—NATASHA!” screamed Bucky somewhere behind her. She turned to look for Bucky. His feet slipped and slid on the untreated floor in his attempt to get to her.

“What happened?” asked Natasha. She took a step towards him and down the step ladder. It was then that the pain made itself known. Her shoulder. She lost her footing and fell down the step ladder where Bucky was waiting to catch her.

“What happened?” repeated Natasha.

“I don’t know, we’ve gotta go,” said Bucky. She hadn’t heard the first bullet that ripped through her shoulder, but she heard the one that ripped through Bucky’s thigh. He screamed and fell against her, just barely catching himself on the step ladder to avoid crushing her.

“Come on,” rasped Natasha.

She kicked Bucky back onto his feet and he pulled her up after himself. They hung off of each other and moved as fast as their injuries would allow.

“STOP!” shouted a voice somewhere in the dark chambers. “Natasha Romanoff, James Barnes, you’re under arrest!”

“Where is he?” whispered Natasha.

“I can’t tell,” mumbled Bucky.

“HANDS UP!” screeched the agent. Natasha’s eyes followed his voice and pinned him, perched at the top of one of the shelves. No good agent got the high ground to arrest someone. There was definitely someone on the ground waiting to corral them. They’d cross that bridge when they came to it. Natasha made a quick move for the gun in her holster. It was seconds before it was drawn and fired in the direction of the voice she had yet to see clearly. The groan that followed told her she’d hit him.

They dragged each other to the chamber door. Once they stepped from the relative darkness of the Personnel Vault into the main floor of the records room, she could hear bullets ricocheting. None were hitting them, they were all warning shots. They had to be warning shots considering what an easy and slow moving target Bucky and Natasha had become.

A few shouts of warning came their way along with more bullets but Natasha wasn’t going to stop. She couldn’t. She disobeyed her instincts and fired blindly into the ill-lit din behind her and pushed Bucky forward into the worse-lit areas of the records room. She could hear the agents around them scrambling to pin them in a corner and she was determined not to let that happen.

They forged ahead in darkness and silence. They had lost the speed advantage and they never had the numbers advantage. Being quiet and unseen was their only option at this point. Natasha lead and weaved a path for the two of them between cabinets and shelving. The records room had been designed to be and open and cohesive room. Over the years the cohesion may have fallen to the wayside, the openness had not and there was very little protection provided by the file cabinets. Even less so as they got closer to the main door and the cabinets turned to boxes.

The main door was it’s own issue. Going in it had been sealed up tight but now it was wide open. Agents and light were streaming in haphazardly, Bucky and Natasha were just barely eluding both. Bucky had to rest before powering through the blockade at the main entrance and Natasha had to plan in their makeshift camp between three file cabinets and one large box. It was dark enough and they were hidden enough to confuse the agents surrounding them. Natasha could hear them needlessly wandering further and further back into the records room.

The agents in the main doorway looked nervous, wielding guns and flashlights. Natasha was glad for their reputations. If the agents were so scared of being attacked by the two of them, they’d make more mistakes. Of course, with two bullet wounds, there was no chance of Natasha or Bucky being able to effectively disarm and disengage any other agent. She knew she’d have to use that assumed fear to barrel out. Before she could signal that thought to Bucky, a second bullet ripped through her calf and all decision making power went out the window.

Bucky picked her up with whatever remaining strength he had and just ran out. Natasha fired on the agents in front of them and behind them. Her shoulder restricted her movement, and her leg restricted her ability to care whether or not she severely wounded anybody.

They bursted into the main office where Howard stood at the helm. Natasha stopped herself short of firing on him. And he repaid the favor by not alerting the guards posted at the doors to their sudden departure.

Outside, alarms were blaring from every direction. There was enough commotion that no eyes turned on them. Bucky hurried around the main office bunker to get a bit of cover. Natasha watched her blood drip down her arm, down her gun and onto the leaf-covered grass below her. It made her wonder when she would pass out from the blood loss. The extra shot to her leg had sped the process up considerably.

From her angle of thrown over Bucky’s shoulder, she could see the wound in his thigh. It was bleeding but his super-soldier body was slowing down that process already. It wasn’t fair the kind of advantage he got.

“Nat, you gotta crawl this yourself,” said Bucky as he flung her back down and lifted the part of the chain link they’d crawled under to get in. She needed her shoulder and her leg to do a proper army crawl. The crawl she managed without her shoulder or her leg was painful and ineffective. After her first attempt, Bucky shoved her hard enough in the thigh to get her on the other side.

He followed and picked her up once again. Running wasn’t really an option but he was doing his best to simulate it. Natasha pulled the other gun from her other holster and fired on the straggling agents who had spotted them. A few went down, the ones that didn’t disappeared when Bucky made it to the surrounding woods.

“We’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay,” mumbled Bucky.

“Where’s the fucking car?!” screeched Natasha. Another bump in Bucky’s path jostled her and her searingly painful bullet wounds.

“I can see it, I can see it,” said Bucky. “You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.”

Natasha did her best to keep her whining or writhing to a minimum until Bucky spilled her into the passenger’s seat of the car and did the same for himself in the driver’s seat. He screamed when his injured thigh hit the hot vinyl but pressed on and floored it.

“Where are we going?” mumbled Natasha.

“Away,” replied Bucky.

“Stay off the highway, it’s too easy to get caught there.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

Natasha felt the car swerve off road for a moment and regain it’s balance when Bucky had found a back road he trusted. Bucky was a relatively good driver and the situation was dire enough that she didn’t have time to critique his route or his methods. Her leg wound was gushing blood with no sign of stopping, her shoulder had coagulated to an extent.

“Is there a knife in our bag somewhere?”

“Only if you brought one,” said Bucky. The car swerved and knocked Natasha against the door.

“Fuck, Bucky, watch it!” groaned Natasha.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” said Bucky.

“Buck, I _am_ okay. Panicking’s not gonna help anything.” Natasha could feel herself draining and tiring out. “Bucky, do we have a tail?”

“Not yet,” replied Bucky, his foot pressing the pedal down just a bit further.

“Okay pull over.”

“Why?”

“I need some dressings here, Buck,” wheezed Natasha.

Bucky brought the car to an abrupt stop. He jumped out but left the engine running. The door was much heavier and rustier than Natasha recalled and it took most of her strength to shove it open. When she finally did, Bucky was there with first-aid kit in hand.

“Which one first?”

Natasha swung her leg out in response. Bucky knelt and opened the first aid kit. It was from a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane so it was overly-prepared to say the least. Bucky fished out the alcohol and bandages and on the way found a set of syringes.

“I think this is anesthetic,” mumbled Bucky as he stared through a syringe at her.

“I don’t need that, just stop the bleeding.”

“I’m gonna give you some, I think it’ll help you,” said Bucky. Natasha didn’t argue or flinch when he embedded the needle into the meat of her calf. It made the cutting and ripping off of her pant leg more bearable. Bucky taped down cotton and wrapped her leg as carefully as he could before securing it with a pin.

“Now the shoulder.”

“Alright, strip,” teased Bucky. He did his impression of forties burlesque music as he painstakingly helped her peel the jacket off of her wounded shoulder. She would’ve found it funny had she not been ready to amputate her own arm. Bucky cut the sleeve of her t-shirt off, there was no real point in trying to work around it. He gripped the muscle of her shoulder and injected more anesthetic. “You’re lucky I saved this first-aid kit or you’d be bleeding out and infected by now.”

He gave her one last swipe of alcohol. The anesthesia worked quickest at the injection site deeper in her muscles so she still had the privilege of feeling the horrific burning sensation of the alcohol dripping over her shoulder.

“Just patch me up, Barnes. You’re next.”

“Hey, what’s that?” He gestured to a folded sheet of paper sticking out of her jacket pocket. He didn’t make a grab for it, he was much too busy stopping the bleeding in her shoulder. Natasha took it instead. She unfolded it with her free hand against her thigh.

“It’s a note.”

“Out loud, please.”

“‘Agent Romanoff,” began Natasha. “I don’t know what the two of you are up to—“

“Is that from Meyer?” said Bucky. The panic in his voice was completely unmasked and palpable.

“No it’s—“ Bucky snatched it out of her hands.

“This is in Russian, I can’t read this!” Bucky handed it back to her with a dramatic thrust of his arm. Natasha rolled her eyes.

“Since when do you not speak Russian?”

“Oh sure! I was captured by Germans and held by _more_ _Germans_ , of _course_ I should be fully literate in _Russian!”_ screeched Bucky.

“Buck, S.H.I.E.L.D. taught you Russian two years ago,” groaned Natasha. “The point is it’s not in Russian. Whoever wrote it just used the Cyrillic alphabet. It’s written in english.”

“Who cares how it’s written, what does it say!”

“I was getting to that when you grabbed it!”

Bucky opened his mouth to reply but ultimately shut up. She cleared her throat to continue reading the letter. “ ‘Agent Romanoff, I don’t know what the two of you are up to but I’d trust you further than anyone else here. You’ve both got the most to lose.’ ”

“Well he’s right about that.”

“Shut the hell up. ‘I have a feeling you’re both aware that it’s our highest ranking personnel that had their files stolen. While I can see that Stark and Carter have been taking a few precautions with the other agents, but they’re not taking it seriously. They’re so focused on this President’s Ball and getting more funding that this is slipping through the cracks. I would never condone going AWOL but since you two already have I have a few tips that might help.’ “

“Who’s this from?”

Natasha shrugged and checked the bottom of the note. “It’s the fuckin’—It’s the clerk from the records’ room.”

“What could _he_ have to tell _us—“_

“Bucky, remember? He said himself that _he’s_ the one who does most of the redacting. He knows more than us I’m sure now let me finish. ’Meyer is on the guest list for the President’s Ball. He’s a highly ranking foreign diplomat so it would be weirder if he wasn’t invited, but still. Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, and Sharon Carter are now under very high surveillance in case either of you try to get in touch with any of them. And lastly, you’re probably wondering how Peggy Carter tracked your location to the motel. It was regulation to put trackers in every ex-Hydra recruit. It’s been five years, they go on the fritz sometimes so I think you two have a little more time in the records’ room before they figure it out. For future reference, your trackers are in your shoulders. Agent Barnes’s shoulder is compromised by his arm. Short circuit his arm to deactivate it. I’m not sure how to deactivate yours Agent Romanoff, I’m sorry. I don’t know what you can do with that information but I think you should know it. Something feels _off_ about the President’s Ball. I feel so helpless. Please do your bests.’ “

Natasha stared at the rushed Cryllic handwriting on the cheap yellow paper and wondered, firstly, when the note had been slipped into her pocket, and if she could trust what was written.

“Your tracking chip…probably got shot out,” said Bucky. “Actually…Nat, we weren’t asked to surrender. You were just…shot.”

“So what?”

“So! So whoever shot you knew they were shooting out the tracker, they did it on purpose! There’s a zero percent chance Howard and Peggy want us dead, there’s no way they’ve got orders to shoot on sight. Whoever shot you did it to get the tracker out!”

“You think so?”

“I know so—Nat, look at all this mutiny!”

Bucky wrapped his leg with the bandages that were left over and gave Natasha a quiet few seconds to think.

“It’s like they’re scared to say anything, but’ll do _anything_ to help us. I’m intimidated by Peggy too but if I thought there was something _this_ dire I’d swallow it,” thought Natasha aloud.

“Yeah but,” grunted Bucky as he secured his bandage, “if they suggest what we’re suggesting they get cleaned out and fired, Nat. It’s risky enough for us to throw around Hydra accusations but if someone lower than us — which is everyone— does it, they’re gone. Especially right now with all of the fuss over the President’s Ball and the funding.”

“So we _are_? We _are_ thinking it’s Hydra?”

“Isn’t that what the file said?”

Natasha sighed and shook her head. “That’s just it, Buck. According to his file, Meyer didn’t exist until ten years ago.”

Bucky didn’t say anything, his stare bore into Natasha for a few intense seconds. Both of them lost in thought and trying to decipher what an empty file could mean.

“We don’t have time, let’s get back on the road.”

“We’ve gotta short circuit your arm first,” said Natasha. “Get the jumper cables out.”

Bucky limped to the trunk while Natasha limped to the hood. She popped it open and took the jumper cables Bucky handed off to her. Black to black, red to red.

“Is this gonna hurt you?” asked Natasha.

“Why don’t I clip one to you? You can find out yourself.”

“Three seconds, I’ll take it off after three seconds.”

“Just do it, Nat!”

Natasha clipped one of the clips to Bucky’s metal hand. He went down instantaneously. Getting the jumper cable off of him was too risky. She counted to three and reached back under the hood to disconnect him. Natasha threw it to the ground and waited for Bucky’s convulsing to stop before she disconnected the cable from his hand. She crawled on her knees through the pain to rest her hands on Bucky’s face, to still him for a few seconds.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m—I’m okay,” said Bucky through a tight jaw. “How are you?”

“I can’t turn a car with my shoulder like this, can you still drive?”

“I’m dyin’ to. Give me a destination.”

“D.C.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“How far are we from D.C.?” grumbled Bucky.

“Well we’re about five miles closer from when you last asked,” replied Natasha as he finger traced their position on the map. “Do you want me to drive?”

“The turn radius on your shoulder is dismal. I’m just bored now mainly.”

“It’s been an hour, Buck.”

“Can we play the alphabet game?”

“No—“

“Please, Nat! Please! I really think if I get any more board-er I will literally drop dead right here in this car!” yelled Bucky.

“Ambulance!” replied Natasha. “Off duty ambulance coming the other way.”

“Thank you…Bus, three cars behind us.”

Natasha scanned the Jersey countryside in search of a C. “Oh—Car.”

“What the fuck starts with ‘D’…” mumbled Bucky. “Duck!”

“Electrical post.”

“That’s a stretch,” laughed Bucky. “Those are called ‘phone lines’ not ‘electrical posts’. Fence.”

Natasha smiled but couldn’t find it in herself to laugh. Maybe it was the anesthetic or maybe it was the situation, though it was definitely both, but she couldn’t let herself become distracted. In most missions they were so far emotionally removed from what was happening that the inbetween time was their own. But now she was filled with genuine worry about the friends she considered family.

“Fence,” repeated Bucky. “C’mon, Fence. It’s your turn.”

“I’m not in the mood anymore, Barnes.”

“Nat, worrying’s not gonna help anyone.”

“I know,” sighed Natasha.

“Actually…while we’re here. Read my file.” Natasha glanced over and saw Bucky’s knuckles were white around the steering wheel.

“You don’t have to do that just cause I let you read mine. You said yourself, we’ve had similar pasts—“

“Nat, there are a few things in there I want you to know before one of us dies. You’re not doing anything anyway, just read it.”

Natasha grumbled and stretched to grab the filefolder. She leafed through it to find Bucky’s and cracked it open. When he read her file he’d said that their histories were more similar than she might have thought. Reading through the file proved him right. There wasn’t a single word on any of the pages that didn’t send Natasha’s mind back to some atrocity she’d committed.

“Well Buck…we’re two of a kind I guess. I’m still worse though, you didn’t have anything like the hospital fire but—“

“You killed those kids to save them from dying in the fire—“

“That I caused! It’s not like I didn’t know what was gonna happen when I started it—“

“I killed that little girl ‘cause she got in my way! I didn’t have to do it, Nat, but I did. And of all the fuckin’ faces I get flashes of, the faces that keep me up, hers is the one that never fuckin’ leaves! We’re even! We’re the same! They made us partners for a _reason_. What you did is no worse than what I did and at a certain point you’ve gotta stop acting like you’re a demon.”

“That’s why you wanted me to read this? To prove that what I did isn’t as horrible as I know it is?” Natasha shut the file.

“No. What you did was horrible. All I’m saying is that what I did was equally horrible. There’s a time and place for us to wallow over this but you spend every day back at that hospital.”

“You’re not my therapist.”

“I’m your friend, though. And you make me sleep at night. If I didn’t have you around I’d be lost in my head the rest of my life…I thought maybe if you read what I’ve done you’d get some sleep too.”

Natasha smiled despite herself and looked over at Bucky. His eyes were trained on her which explained the swerving of the car. “It does help.”

“Good.” She shifted the files in the folder in search of ‘B’ for Barnes. “Actually…Actually there’s one more thing in there I want you to read.”

“Fine.” Natasha opened the folder again and waited for further instruction.

“Flip to my war days—when they started the file on me.”

“Why? I’ve seen the documentaries, I’ve read all the books.”

“They left some stuff out.” Bucky’s knuckles were white again and his driving was suffering just a bit more. If Natasha didn’t know better she’d call it a mild panic attack.

“Now why would the government leave out classified details of your Commandos missions,” teased Natasha, trying to lighten the mood. Her eyes scanned over the first page of Bucky’s file. It listed his height and weight, with and without the arm strangely enough, hair color eye color, parents, siblings, and military rank. “Wow, I feel like I really know you now.”

“Keep reading, asshole.”

It listed Bucky’s interactions with Peggy during bootcamp, his promotion to sergeant, and his discharge.

“Wait—you were discharged?”

“Keep reading.”

                       ‘James Barnes was issued a discharge in mid-October of 1943. He was captured before the discharge could reach him. Once he was returned to an                                      American base by Steve Rogers, Rogers requested the discharge be revoked in exchange for Barnes serving as a Howling Commando. The discharge was                            revoked.’

That was a lot at once. She’d read her own file and she knew how the curtness and shortness of the wording made things sound a bit different to how they really were. And on first glance it sounded as if Steve had forced Bucky to stay in the war, he’d thrown his Captain America weight around and forced his best friend to continue with him. It didn’t sound right, it didn’t sound like Steve, but it was written very clearly for her.

“You never wanted to be a Commando?” mumbled Natasha. “Steve made you stay in the war?”

“That’s—no, that’s not what happened…It wasn’t a regular discharge it was…blue,” choked Bucky.

“Is that like…sick leave?”

“How do you not know what that is?” snapped Bucky.

“Sorry I didn’t keep up with world war two terms, Buck. I had a hard enough time learning the pop culture of _this_ year!” Bucky rubbed his face with his flesh hand tiredly before returning to gripping the wheel too tight. His metal arm whirred as if he was gearing up to snap the damn thing off. “What is it?”

“It’s…it’s when they want you gone but don’t wanna explain why to anyone,” said Bucky as if that was a good enough explanation.

“What’d you do that had to be so hush hush?”

“I slept with a corporal.”

“I thought the women never really left their bases—“

“The women don’t. The men do.”

“Oh,” laughed Natasha as it dawned on her. “ _That_ kinda discharge.”

Bucky was bright red and not at all amused.

“Was it a one time thing or are you always—“

“I’m always.”

It made a lot of things in their shared history as partners make sense. She wouldn’t say that out loud though. She’d never seen Bucky so tangibly uncomfortable and she honestly didn’t know what to do to fix it. If he was this uncomfortable with talking about it, she had no idea why he decided to tell her at all.

“So…what was his name?” said Natasha. He’d brought it up because he wanted to talk about it. But it looked like Natasha was going to have to do most of the talking.

“I don’t remember…Corporal…Corporal Matthews I think.”

“So he wasn’t the love of your life.”

“No, just a stand in. We got caught by a friend of mine. He was my C.O. at the time too…I thought he wasn’t gonna write me up but when I got back from the Hydra base they gave me that ticket home before they gave me medical attention.”

“So Steve made you stay to—“

“I wanted to stay. If I got sent home like that I’d get my ribs kicked in every other minute. Plus, Steve was there,” said Bucky with a laugh.

“Is there a point to this story, Buck?”

“I live with Steve.”

“Are you having a fuckin’ aneurism? Finish one thought before you start the next.”

“They’re the same thought, Nat,” insisted Bucky. “C’mon don’t make say it.”

“Oh—Oh like—I’ve known you both for comin’ up on four years! Four years and you wait to tell me now?!” Natasha hit him and the car swerved in response. It wasn’t the secret keeping that had her hurt, it was that she thought she knew everything there was to know. Days, weeks, months of her life had been spent with the pair of them and something so enormous had slipped right past her for so long.

“Stop hitting me!” screamed Bucky. “We don’t tell anyone! Nat, it’s not somethin’ my generation talks about and—well I know Steve always trusted you but I didn’t wanna say anything just in case. And then we got to be so close and it was weird that I hadn’t already told you so I just never did.”

“You’re so stupid. You’re so stupid!”

“I know!”

Natasha stopped hitting him and sat back in her seat in a huff. She had no right to be mad. Knowing everything about Bucky was something she prided herself in but the reverse wasn’t even close to true. Bucky lived his life like an open book aside from one thing, Natasha had so many deep secrets it was a wonder anyone felt close to her.

“Nat?” mumbled Bucky after a few tense seconds of silence. “I’m sorry.”

“I know…It’s fine though really, you’re entitled to privacy.”

“Not from you,” said Bucky with a laugh. “We’re partners, we’re supposed to tell each other everything.”

“Right.” Her gazed fixed on the road. Her S.H.I.E.L.D. file didn’t have it all, there were still a handful of bombs she could drop on Bucky but she just didn’t. There was so much she could tell him and yet she made no effort to continue the conversation. Instead she let Bucky think the silence that began to deafen the two of them was his fault, not the product of her being lost in her own mind.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“So an empty file,” said Bucky, the first words between them in a full hour. “What do you think that means?”

“I don’t know,” said Natasha with an apathetic shrug. “I thought my file was pretty lacking but it at least knew I existed before ten years ago…I’m worried that…maybe we jumped the gun.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…maybe his file is so sparse because there’s nothing to report. Maybe he’s completely clean and we’re doing all this for nothing.”

“Nat, c’mon. Sam Wilson is the cleanest person I’ve ever met and his file’s got everything about him down to his neighbors when he was a kid.”

“I told you to stop reading their files—and he was in the military, Buck, of course they have everything on him. But a foreign diplomat who’s made almost no waves at all…There’s a chance it’s empty because there’s nothing to report.”

“I doubt it. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

“What’s the smoke?”

“He stole our files on top agents and Hydra compounds. That’s very specific information and he did it in a way that an innocent man wouldn’t. He had one of his henchmen go completely undercover for months to get those files.”

“Then why not take his own?”

“He must’ve already known what was in it. I already knew what was in mine.”

“Okay, if you’re _so_ sure he’s some kind of corrupt, what’s your theory on his file being barren?”

“Well…” began Bucky. Natasha knew the look on his face as him trying to conceal how hard he was scrambling to get an answer out. “Maybe the file only has ten years of a record on him because that’s how old he is?”

“Wow. You’ve cracked the case, Buck. He’s a ten year old,” deadpanned Natasha.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it!”

“What did you mean then?”

“I meant he’s not really Ernst Meyer. That’s just his…”

“Stage name?” teased Natasha.

“Pseudonym,” snapped Bucky. “Alias, that one works too.”

“You think he’s under an assumed identity?”

“It could happen,” said Bucky with a shrug.

“Buck, to sell this theory, you’ve gotta act a little more confident than that.”

“It makes the most sense.”

“It would if he weren’t a politician,” said Natasha with a resigned sigh. “This all lines up until we get to that. If he’s so worried about his identity, worried enough to change it completely, why thrust himself into the limelight permanently?”

“Well…We’ll figure that out later.”

“Fine just get us to D.C.,” said Natasha.

“Why?”

“Seriously?”

“Just tell me why dammit,” groaned Bucky.

“Meyer’s gonna be at the President’s Ball. That’s why he’s in America in the first place. We’ll just meet him there and see what he’s up to,” said Natasha.

“Oh right, we’ll just break into the most heavily guarded event of the year and have a conversation with him. Easy.”

“I didn’t say it’d be easy but we can do it.”

“How?”

“We’re driving to Sam’s,” said Natasha.

“No,” replied Bucky. “You read the same note I did. That clerk said he, Steve, and Sharon are under heavy surveillance. We can’t show up anywhere near them or—“

“Surveillance by other members of S.H.I.E.L.D..”

“Can you just get at what you’re trying to say, I don’t have time to guess,” sighed Bucky.

“You’re right. That agent must have shot my tracker out on purpose because, A, every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is a better shot than that, and B, there’s no way in hell they had orders to kill us. So at the very least, there’s a group of agents on our side within S.H.I.E.L.D..”

“Yeah so? There were still plenty of agents shooting to kill. We can’t just rely on a few good eggs.”

“Yes we can. Buck picture this. Steve’s gone on some mission he hasn’t told a soul about, everyone’s looking for him and they’re posting agents at my apartment and Sam’s and Sharon’s."

“Okay, pictured.”

“Good, now, where do you try and get assigned?”

“…at you, Sam, or Sharon’s apartment,” admitted Bucky. “But that’s still not a sure thing—“

“None of this is a sure thing! But Sam’s trustworthy. Since S.H.I.E.L.D. knows about you and Steve, they’re gonna have the heaviest guards with him. So we’ll go to Sam.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“Well…let’s get out of Jersey first, I’ll know more the closer we get.”


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

* * *

 

It took another hour or two of driving around the backroads before they made it into D.C.. It was a dangerous move. Natasha justified it with the idea that the chance of the two of them returning to D.C. was so little that no one would notice if and when they did. Bucky drove precisely at the speed limit, the two of them sweat through their clothes the entire drive over to Sam’s.

He lived across town from where they’d entered which meant a lot of tense stoplights and worried glances to each other when they passed the lingering cop cars.

“Okay, there—there!” said Natasha. “Turn right and park under that thing.”

“That thing’s called an awning,” said Bucky.

“ _You’re_ an awning, just park!”

“I’m not an awning,” mumbled Bucky as he slammed the brakes on and parked in the empty spot by Sam’s townhouse.

“I’m sorry I called you an awning. C’mon, we gotta get inside quick.”

Natasha led the way up Sam’s back staircase and to his back door. It was just a bit more concealed than the front door and made Natasha feel incrimentally better about being out in the open. She and Bucky both began knocking like crazy, occasionally glancing over their shoulders in a panic until finally the blinds raised and there stood Sam.

“Shit.” His voice was muffled through the door but the sentiment made it all the way through. He swung the door open and hurried them both in before slamming the door, locking it, and letting the blinds back down.

“Thanks for this, Sam,” said Natasha.

“What the hell’s going on? Howard and Carter won’t tell any of us one goddamn thing and—Were you shot?” Sam interrupted himself to point out Natasha’s poorly-bandaged wounds.

“Oh, you noticed. Yeah I got a little shot.”

“Go—Go shower and clean those out, you can explain everything once you’re not on the brink of death. You remember where it is right?”

“I do.”

“And you don’t need…ya know—help or anything right?”

Natasha walked out without another word and limped her way to the bathroom. Her clothes stuck to her sweat-drenched body and damn near refused to leave her skin. It would’ve been fine had she not been shot. Every move she made to peel another article of clothing off set her whole body aflame.

After a drawn out struggle with her shirt, she wrangled her pants off relatively quickly and peeled the makeshift bandages off of her shoulder and leg and hopped in the shower. The water jets weren’t strong but they still hurt her. She had to dodge any direct hits from a stray jet which made cleaning the wound tricky but not impossible.

She toweled off as best she could and waddled back to Sam’s bedroom. There was no chance of her squeezing back into her old clothes so she took Sam’s, she knew he’d understand. A feeling of security came with his clothes. Sam knew what he was doing and at very least his house would keep them safe. She could finally take a deep breath and gather herself without having to worry about S.H.I.E.L.D. agents breaking in the doors.

Her leg wound hurt less than her shoulder but impeded her movement far more now that the anesthetic was wearing off. Her hops back to the main room were pathetic, she wouldn’t do very well in another high speed chase. When she returned, she found Sam inspecting Bucky’s wound on his kitchen counter. Bucky was laid out, missing a pantleg, and insisting he was fine while Sam poked the wound in his thigh.

“OW, Jesus Sam!”

“Oh that hurts?” said Sam. He pressed down again. “And that?”

“I’m gonna tell Steve!”

“What? I’m just treating your wounds, I have to make sure you still have feeling all over…Does it hurt _here?”_ Sam jabbed his thumb into the more bloody area of Bucky’s leg.

“Inject the penicillin, asshole.”

“Well would you look at this,” said Sam with an overdramatic sigh. “I take you into my home, two known fugitives, and I treat your wounds and this is the thanks I get.”

“Knock it off you two,” said Natasha. She supported most of her weight on the door jamb and wasn’t sure how to shift said weight back onto her legs.

“Please, help yourself to my clothes,” said Sam with a grin.

“Thanks, Sam.”

“Let me just inject him and I’ll get to yours,” said Sam. He sobered up and jabbed a needle into a few places around Bucky’s wound before taping it up and letting him off the counter with a clap on the back. Natasha hoisted herself up onto the counter in Bucky’s place and let Sam inspect her calf. “You got shot alright.”

“Prognosis?”

“You’ll keep the leg,” said Sam. “This’ll hurt, I’ve gotta give you a little more than I gave him since you’re not…whatever the hell he and Steve are.”

“I’m a big girl, Sam, just do it,” said Natasha. The penicillin felt like injecting plaster of paris into her leg. Painful, slow, and heavy. Then Sam repeated the process in her shoulder.

“Alright let me wrap you up, don’t move.”

Natasha propped herself up on one elbow and watched Sam wrap gauze around her leg two time, three times, four, five, six — “Sam that’s good.”

“If you say so.” Sam bit the bandage and secured it with a safety pin against Natasha’s shin. “Alright, so one of you start talking.”

“I’ll do it,” said Natasha when she saw Bucky gearing up to speak. Bucky and Sam couldn’t go more than five minutes without making some kind of remark to or about each other. It was done out of love but they didn’t have the time for it. “What do you know?”

“I know you and Barnes met with Meyer to retrieve a S.H.I.E.L.D. file, see how much this guy knows about us. Then you dropped off the grid. I went to Steve’s this morning to see if he knew anything. He said he didn’t just that the plane crash wasn’t fatal, I never heard about a plane crash in the first place but now I know it wasn’t fatal. And then a bunch of agents showed up at my house and said they were surveilling.”

“Did they see us come in?” asked Bucky.

“Well I thought if you were gonna barge in on one of us uninvited, it’d be me since you’re not stupid enough to try and get Steve. But I told my guards that I knew you both very well and that their effort was better spent surveilling Steve or Sharon.”

“Thanks Sam.”

“So fill me in, why’re you here?”

“The files Meyer had were the personnel files of our top agents and some lower-level ones. It wasn’t just the locations of the old Hydra compounds.”

Sam pinned the last of Natasha’s bandages. “So he knows about…all of us?”

“Everything about all of us. Bucky knew if turned it all over to S.H.I.E.L.D. they’d take us off the case but something’s wrong. Meyer talked to us, humored us, all night even though he knew we were S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. It feels like he’s gonna do something but we just…don’t know what.”

“Were you the two that broke into the Lehigh base this afternoon?”

“We were looking for Meyer’s file,” said Natasha as she hopped off the counter onto her good leg. “We thought if he had some old ties to Hydra we could confirm that whatever he’s doing is related to that.”

“But?” prompted Sam.

“But his files empty. It tracks his political career and that’s it. No parents, no birthplace, no middle name. He’s nothing.”

“You think when he had his henchman steal our files he also had him clean up his own?” asked Bucky.

“Why not just steal it if he was gonna go through that trouble?” replied Natasha. “Something’s going on but we don’t know what. The fact that Meyer knew who we were, watched us steal our files back, and hasn’t said a word…I don’t know, I’m worried we’re walking into a trap.”

“You…So you said he knew who you two were when you met? He saw through the disguises?” said Sam.

Natasha nodded. “Our disguises were more…background-based, so it was easy to spot us since he had both of our pictures. He knew us and he still went along with it.”

Sam looked pensive and feel silent.

“What?”

“It’s just…he’s still coming to the President’s Ball.”

“How do you know that for sure?” asked Bucky.

“He confirmed it with the President last night. S.H.I.E.L.D. monitored the call and Steve saw the transcript, he told me about it when I asked where you two were,” said Sam.

“So that’s it—He’s planning something for the President’s Ball,” said Natasha. “But…what.”

“If he were planning something for the Ball…I feel like he would’ve tried to stop us. We haven’t come across him once so far and he let us go when he did have the chance,” said Bucky.

“I’m with Nat on this,” said Sam. “He’s a shady guy and confirming that he’d be at the Ball is a weird move, none of the other guests have confirmed their attendance. Something’s going on at the Ball, I’m thinking whatever it is’ll be a trap though.”

“Well…we don’t have much of a choice,” said Natasha.

“So you’re gonna break into the President’s Ball?”

“It won’t be so hard since we have our very own ‘invited guest’ on our side.” Natasha batted her lashes and Sam rolled his eyes.

“You know I really wasn’t planning on spending my night trying to help you two gatecrashers.”

“Which is why we’re so thankful you will.”

“You both owe me. I’ll go try and get Steve in on this, he can probably work on Sharon, you’re gonna need all the help you can get if you’re gonna purposely walk into a weird German’s trap.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Sam put them up for the night on his pullout couch. Bucky tried to negotiate his way into the actual bed to no avail and pouted himself to sleep next to Natasha. She couldn’t sleep. They had three days before the night of the Ball and they had no plan. It was such a fortified event that breaking in would require most of their skill, most of their planning. That left them with very little time to make contingency plans based on what they found inside. They couldn’t arrange for a plan A-Z in case whatever Meyer was up to was exponentially worse than they imagined, they just had to hope for the best.

And that kept her up. That and the sounds of the house settling. Every creak in floor, suspicious shadow on the wall, chirp of the cicadas outside had her bolt upright wondering if S.H.I.E.L.D. was right outside, or worse, Meyer. It was years, decades even, since she had felt fear that she couldn’t ignore. Maybe it was because she was potentially going up against her former captors, Hydra, or maybe it was because she finally had something they could take from her.

Her mind has almost let go of its lucidity and given way to sleep when a bang woke her. A loud, hard thud. She shot up right. The room was so still she would’ve second-guessed hearing it at all had Bucky not also woken up.

“What was that?” grumbled Bucky, still half-asleep.

“I don’t know,” said Natasha. She leant over her side of the bed and rummaged through her bag to find her gun. “I’m gonna take a look.”

“Mmkay.” Bucky fell back asleep before he finished speaking.

Natasha stood and held her breath, waiting for the second bang. After a minute of stagnant silence, she sat back in bed. She put the safety back on and lied back down. The second bang never came but it did keep her from every getting good rest. Every half hour or so she jolted awake and took her sweet time falling back to sleep.

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

Morning dawned and she was there to see it. At around 7, Sam came in from his bedroom, ignored her and Bucky, and began work on making eggs.

“I want some,” said Natasha. Sam jumped in response.

“Jesus, Romanoff, I thought you were asleep,” replied Sam as he reached for two more eggs.

“I couldn’t get much sleep last night.” She sat up and stretched her muscles out before joining Sam in the kitchen. “Guess I’m a little spooked.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Sam fired up the stove and poured the eggs into a skillet.

“Well, I’m supposed to be better than ‘spookable’,” laughed Natasha.

“That’s stupid,” said Sam, his back still to her. “If you don’t get scared you don’t have any instincts.”

“Whatever…Hey I heard a really loud bang last night, did you hear it?” said Natasha.

“I sure did. I also made it.”

“What?”

“I accidentally slammed my bathroom door in the middle of the night—I didn’t think it’d wake you though, sorry.”

“I’m a light sleeper anyway, but it woke Bucky too and it usually takes nothing short of an airhorn to do that,” said Natasha with a grin.

Sam shook his head and turn to face her, sliding her a plate of eggs and holding one of his own. His eyes went through Natasha to glare at Bucky’s sleeping form. Natasha turned to see what was so offensive but, unsurprisingly, there was nothing but Bucky there.

“Who does he think he is, takin’ up so much room,” muttered Sam.

“What’s your deal? Why do you two get under eachother’s skin so easily?”

“It’s his fault whatever it is,” replied Sam.

Bucky rolled over in his sleep and flopped and arm down where Natasha had been. Something in him must’ve had the same thought. Sam and Natasha watched him sleepily feel around the bed for Natasha before sitting up in a breathless panic.

“Nat—“

“Right here, Buck,” replied Natasha through a laugh.

“Oh,” said Bucky.

“Want breakfast?” asked Sam. Bucky nodded in response. Sam hadn’t bandaged Bucky’s thigh the night before so, thanks to the old short shorts Sam had leant him, Natasha could see his wound. It was almost healed all the way up and he walked with no visible limp.

“Does it even hurt?” sighed Natasha. Bucky shook his head and proved it by prodding the most tender part of bullet hole. “It’s not fair.”

“Hey young lady, if you ever get drafted into war and die I’ll make sure you get some of the serum too.”

“You’ve made your point.”

Sam made more eggs for Bucky without complaint surprisingly, which meant Bucky ate them without making cheap jabs at Sam’s cooking.

“Okay, so the plan?” prompted Sam.

“We don’t have one, Sam,” said Natasha.

“You want to get into the Ball though, right?”

“Right,” said Bucky with a mouthful of eggs.

“That’s all we know right now. We don’t even know what we’ll do if we get in. Hell, I don’t even know where it’s being hosted.”

“Don’t panic yet. That’s all stuff that Steve _should_ know or be able to find out. So what do you want me to get from him?”

Natasha looked at Bucky who shrugged. “Okay…see if he can tell us the venue and what the security’s like…and maybe some kind of blueprint for wherever it’s being held, if he can?"

“I think we can handle that, lemme call ‘im.”

“Wait!” screeched Bucky. “They might’ve tapped your phones!”

Sam looked at him like he was the dumbest man alive. “I watched them tap ‘em myself, idiot! Everyone’s phones are tapped!”

“But you weren’t about to use a special number or anything you’re just gonna call from your regular house phone?!”

“We worked out a code, it’s easier than that weird hotline the two of you have!” snapped Sam.

“The hotline?” asked Natasha.

“Steve’s got his very own ‘just in case Bucky calls and I don’t want S.H.I.E.L.D. to hear’ phone,” said Sam with an eyeroll. “Like anyone cares about you two playing ‘no you hang up first’.”

“That’s how I called him back in Jersey,” added Bucky.

“So…Sam also knows?” said Natasha. “You can’t get through five minutes of talking to him without ripping each other limb from limb but he gets to know before I do?”

Sam froze at the receiver with a guilty look painted across his face.

“It’s not like that,” replied Bucky. “I didn’t wanna tell him but he…found out on his own.”

“If you two were normal people who locked doors I wouldn’t have found anything out,” muttered Sam as he rinsed out the egg pan.

Natasha clenched her teeth, taking a few moments to try and bear it. Her teeth would give way before the emotions coursing through her passed but she stayed strong.

“Nat,” said Bucky. “Nat, come on. He found out on accident…I would’ve told you too under the same circumstances.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “I don’t care that I wasn’t the first to know.”

“Really? Cause…seems like it…”

“I know what it seems like…You know what, it doesn’t matter, I’m being stupid—“

“You’re not being stupid, what’s the deal?”

“It’s fine.” Bucky attempted to dig deeper a few times but Natasha shushed him and cut him off under the pretense of needing to be quiet while Sam was on the phone.

“Steve—It’s me, Sam…Yeah can I come by?…I shouldn’t need a reason but if you must know, I’m bored…Okay, I’ll be right over.”

“That’s your big fancy code? ‘I’m bored’?” said Bucky.

“Shut your ass Barnes or I’ll steal somethin’ of yours while I’m there,” said Sam. “I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

“Thanks again Sam,” said Natasha.

“Sure…and stay inside and away from the windows. Don’t turn on lights either. Far as the world’s concerned, this house is empty.” Sam left out the front door and locked it behind himself.

“Alright, we got time to kill,” said Natasha.

“Good thing Mr. Perfect doesn’t have anything interesting in his entire house—We’re gonna die of boredom before Meyer can even touch us,” said Bucky. Natasha smirked half heartedly. “Why won’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”

“Because nothing is.”

“Because nothing is,” repeated Bucky in a high pitched, mocking tone. “Seriously, what crawled up your ass?”

She couldn’t help but crack a more genuine smile. “It’s nothing, I’m just having an off few days.”

“You and me both.”

“I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams,” said Natasha without thinking. “Even when I’m not flawless on the inside, everything I do looks flawless on the outside and the last few days I just keep fucking up over and over, and then I find out you’re keeping secrets from me and…I think I’m just not sleeping well.”

“Nat…” said Bucky. He slid off his barstool and shuffled to Natasha’s to wrap his arms around her shoulders. Natasha folded under his weight. “I don’t think you’re perfect.”

“Thanks, Buck, that makes me feel so much better.”

“I never thought you didn’t have faults, you and I’ve both been tripping up a lot since we went AWOL, you can’t start doubting your competence just because—“

“I crashed a plane.”

“Right. One plane crash does not a bad agent make. One of the best agents in all of S.H.I.E.L.D. is _known_ for his plane crash. And I’m the idiot for keeping Steve a secret, it’s just hard to talk about and easier to ignore. I didn’t think about how my best friend would feel finding out about him so late in the game.”

“Yeah well,” said Natasha. He meant well but he couldn’t understand. Her whole career as an agent had been flawless left and right, no mistakes. It made her who she was. And ever since the brainwashing got weaker and the natural fears and worries of being human came back she was one step behind her former self. Always just making it in under the wire and now she couldn’t even do that.

“Feel better?”

“Yeah,” said Natasha.

“Good ‘cause I think I see Clue and I know I can beat you at that one.”

“Don’t hold you breath, you’ve never beaten me at a board game and you never will.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“It was Mr. Green in the study with the noose!” declared Bucky.

“No…You’re…you’re not even close,” said Natasha, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Seriously? Again?”

A loud bang rang through the townhouse, emanating from the front door.

“Mr. Samuel Wilson!” said the man. “Open the door!”

“Where do we go?” whispered Bucky.

“Closet. It’s big enough for us both,” said Natasha.

The two of them crawled back toward’s Sam’s bedroom while the shouting and knocking got louder and more demanding back at the front door. They ignored it and put all their focus on making the house look as convincingly empty as possible. Natasha had shoved the evidence of Cluedo under the couch and hoped the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents wouldn’t check there.

Natasha nestled in among the pants while Bucky got comfortable in the jackets. Natasha held her breath and patiently waited for the sound of the door being broken down. Then the sound of the heavy boots charging over Sam’s wood floors, then the sounds of the voices clearing the rooms. A man came into the bedroom and loudly shoved his way into the bathroom before clearing it then back to the bedroom. There was a tense silence before he threw open the closet door and turned on the light.

Sam had a lot of pants, for some reason, but they weren’t enough to convincingly conceal a fully grown woman. And his jackets sure as hell weren’t enough to convince an overgrown man. Natasha looked the agent right in the eye and waited to see who would throw the first punch when the man flicked the light back off.

“All clear, sir!” said the man on his way out.

The two of them stayed in their positions until a good ten minutes after they were sure the agents had cleared out. They then let themselves relax and emerge from their cramped nooks.

“That was weird.” Bucky stretch his arms and back.

“This whole thing’s weird…First they shoot out my tracker for me, then this…”

“I’m tellin’ ya, Nat. It’s mutiny.”

“Mutiny isn’t good, even if it’s helping us right now, it’s a sign of something worse.”

“Always seeing the bad in people,” sighed Bucky. “You up for a rematch in Clue?”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“Who?!” screamed Sam at the front door. “Who?!”

“You think he saw the door?” said Bucky. The door slammed behind Sam. He huffed his way to the living room with a bag of groceries in his arms.

“What the hell happened?!” screamed Sam.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. came by,” said Bucky.

“Really? And they didn’t take you two in?” He set the bag down on the counter and let it slump over.

“They showed mercy,” said Natasha. “One of the agents saw us both and let us go.”

“Weird…” muttered Sam.

“I can probably fix this,” said another voice by the front door.

“No thanks, Steve. I’ll let S.H.I.E.L.D. pay for the damages,” said Sam.

“Steve?” called Bucky. He didn’t wait for a response. He bolted up and around the corner before Steve had a chance to respond. She couldn’t see their reunion but judging by the faces Sam was making, she didn’t want to see it.

“You’ve been apart for like three days, come on,” teased Sam.

“It felt like longer,” said Steve’s muffled voice.

“Well it wasn’t. Get in here, let’s go over the plans,” said Sam. Natasha threw the board game back into the box with no real care and joined the three of them around the island in Sam’s kitchen. Bucky sat next to Natasha, Sam and Steve worked on weighing down the corners of the blueprints.

“Thanks for this, Steve,” said Natasha.

“I’m sure you would’ve done the same,” said Steve. That was usually his response to being thanked for something he thought was basic decency. He didn’t ever really grasp that most people’s level of basic decency was far below his own.

“So where’s it being held?”

“At an estate. Well it’s more like a country club in the city. It’s where all the politicians and their rich families have lunch and stuff.”

“But it’s in the city?” said Natasha. “Don’t they like their privacy.”

Steve shrugged. “I guess they like having it close to work. Anyway the place is pretty big, it takes up the whole block.”

“Taxpayer money all getting thrown into a fancy country club,” said Bucky, sucking his teeth.

Steve had devised a fairly adequate plan. The country club ran an entire block so there were, naturally, a fair share of entry points. And, naturally, all of those entry points were going to be guarded the night of. So to work around those entry ways, Steve decided jumping in from the roof was the best way to go.

Bucky asked how they would get high enough to jump onto the roof, Natasha asked how and why the guards on the roof wouldn’t notice them. Steve said simply, ‘the same reason the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that broke in didn’t notice you’. Though it was convenient to rely on the mutineers, it seemed risky to hinge their entire plan on the discretion of a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents gone rogue. But they had no other option in reality. There was simply no other way to get into the building so coming in from above it was.

From there, Steve walked them through the layout of the place. The main event was on the second floor in the mail ball room, and dinner was across the hall. According to his source, which he refused to name, security would be the tightest when everyone was supposed to transition from ballroom to dining room and many of the world’s great leaders were crammed together in a hallway. So, though the guards and agents would be on their highest alert, they would also be very concentrated and would give the two of them a little breathing room to find Meyer.

“So what happens when you find him?” asked Sam. Bucky and Natasha both shrugged.

“We don’t even know what he wants,” said Bucky.

“We’re sort of doing this to figure that out,” added Natasha.

“Well…you got us on your side now,” said Steve.

“And we’re gonna need it.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Steve slept over that night. After a good minute of Bucky pleading with Sam while Steve showered, Sam let the two of them have his room. Bucky saying ‘what if I die catching Meyer and never see him again’ really sealed the deal. Which meant Sam was on the pullout couch with her. He was more fun to sleep with anyway since he knew how to work the TV. They turned it up a little too loud to drown out whatever scarring sound they might hear from Sam’s bedroom.

But as the night got darker and deeper, channel after channel shut down their broadcast until finally the last channel playing anything showed the american flag, cued the national anthem, and wished the audience a good night. Sam groaned and got up to switch the box off.

“Guess that means we should be getting some sleep,” said Sam before jumping back into bed.

“You go ahead, I can’t sleep,” said Natasha.

“Is it your gunshots? I can give you a little more anesthetic but I think we should save it for tomorrow night,” said Sam.

“It’s not that…It’s not anything, I guess I’m worried about tomorrow.”

“Only natural. If you didn’t get nervous before a fight it means you’re probably gonna lose.”

“I’ve never lost,” said Natasha.

“What?”

“I’ve never failed a mission in my entire history with Hydra…not one,” said Natasha, her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness and locked on the ceiling.

“Impressive. How’d you do it?”

“I was good. I was a really strong agent, the best in my group I’m sure.”

“You sound almost nostalgic.”

“Maybe I am in a way. I’m glad I’m out but…I was definitely a better agent when I was in,” said Natasha. “By a lot.”

“I don’t think that’s true. Even if it is, it’s a fair trade. And you’ve never blown a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission either so don’t get so down on yourself.”

“I’ve come pretty close to blowing S.H.I.E.L.D. missions…and I think this one already counts as a failure.”

“Coming close and actually blowing a mission are two very different things.”

“Well…I’m having more close calls than I’ve ever had before.”

“To err is human,” said Sam, “and you’re finally human again so that’s to be expected.”

“Bucky doesn’t make those mistakes,” said Natasha. “Bucky’s probably more human than me now…and he doesn’t make those mistakes. He’s always on the ball.”

“Nat, I think we can both agree that Bucky’s brainwashing went deeper than yours by miles. He can’t unlearn a lot of that stuff anymore, it’s just part of him. You should be glad you could let so much of what Hydra put in you go, a lot of the rescued agents can’t say that.”

“Yeah.” And they’re better agents than me, thought Natasha. “You’re right…Let’s get some sleep, we’re gonna need it.”

“Night, Nat.”

“Night, Sam.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Steve was gone by the time Natasha woke up. According to Bucky, his presence was suspicious at best and they really didn’t need any extra alarms raised the day of their big night. Sam was gone too. He went on a run every morning and skipping a day would turn a few heads for sure which left Bucky and Natasha to wrangle up their own breakfasts.

Neither could be bothered to actually cook anything so they had cereal together. It wasn’t good cereal since Sam was such a health nut but it was technically edible and that was enough.

“So…what do you think’s gonna happen?” Bucky spoke through the spoon in his mouth.

Natasha shrugged in response. “Best case scenario, Meyer’s not Hydra, it’s a big misunderstanding and Peggy and Howard don’t kill us.”

“Worst case?”

“Worst case, he’s Hydra and kills us both after killing all the other attendees.”

“Alright, the most likely case?” prompted Bucky.

“I really don’t know this time, Buck. It’s all up in the air.”

“Well…I’m pretty sure Meyer’s Hydra. If nothing else, at the end of tonight we’ll know what the hell he wants with the two of us and everyone else in those files…That’s something.”

“It’s enough.”

“You think we should dress up? To hide in plain sight?” asked Bucky.

“Only if I get to wear the pants and you squeeze into the dress,” replied Natasha.

Sam ironed out the details with Steve before he left and once he back from his run, once he’d showered, once he’d taken his sweet time getting dressed, he briefed the two of them on the solid details of their plan and what to expect.

“Since we’ve got no idea what’s going on, the only thing you can do to prep is memorize the blueprints,” sighed Sam.

“So, how are we getting onto the roof?”

“I have a flight suit,” said Sam as if it were obvious.

“Sam,” laughed Natasha. “There’s just—there’s just no way you can lift me _and_ Bucky. Hell I don’t think you could lift him on his own, he’s so fuckin’ heavy.”

“I’m not leaving this up to that much chance. I’ve got harnesses and I’m just dropping you off. It’ll be fine. I’ll ditch you guys, go back to a different rooftop, leave my flight gear, make it back down in time to meet Steve at the front and walk in with him. You two’ll go in the roof entrance and through the whole _place_ until you find whatever the hell it is we’re looking for.”

“I just need to lay eyes on Meyer one more time and…something’ll happen, I can tell,” said Natasha.

“Is there no escape plan?” asked Bucky.

“No. What the hell kinda escape plan did you want? If you cause enough of a commotion where you can’t just walk out and leave, any escape we’ve planned’ll go right out the window. You’ll have to play that one by ear.”

“I guess we’re ready then,” said Natasha solemnly. “As ready as we can be.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Getting Bucky and Natasha to the venue that night was the most tedious part since they had to be careful no one saw them leave Sam’s house. Sam left in suit and drove off twenty minutes before Bucky and Natasha left. They had to lock up his house and skulked to their stolen car, checking every direction for a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but after a few days of being on the run it was just par for the course to be looking over their shoulder every few seconds. Once they’d left Sam’s neighborhood they could stop worrying about Sam being turned in for harboring two fugitives.

Bucky’s leg was almost healed but Natasha was human so her shoulder and leg still throbbed anytime she dared use either. Sam gave her the anesthetic before he left and told her to inject directly into her leg on the drive over so she did and she let Bucky do the same to her shoulder. It wasn’t enough to inhibit movement too bad but it was enough to dull the screaming pain radiating from both wounds.

They dropped the car a block away from the building they had to meet Sam at. They left their most valuables at Sam’s, including the files, but they brought with them their plethora of arms and two sets of black clothes that made them almost invisible to the pedestrians passing by the alley they hid out in. They loitered in that alley while Natasha pried the lock off the door to the main stairwell. It finally popped off and the two of them rushed inside. A long, arduous journey to the top resulted in their meeting Sam.

He pulled a jumpsuit on over his tuxedo to avoid his wings messing it up.

“Put these on.” Sam tossed them each a series of straps and belts. “They’re harnesses. I have to admit I don’t have the muscle to carry you both that far with my bare hands but that’s what these are for.” Sam looked down and over the enormous country club they had to break into that stood across the street. “I think we have enough altitude from up here to make it even though we’ll be losing a lot of air.”

Natasha took a few steps towards Sam and peered over the edge. Glitzy cars were pulling up to the valet and letting out their esteemed guests who graciously smiled for pictures before heading inside. It was only when Natasha saw just how small the people looked that she began to question the security of the harness Sam was strapping to her.

“You’re sure we’ll make it? We’re not just gonna slam into the side of the building and die?” said Natasha. The rooftop they were on was considerably higher than the rooftop of the country club but Bucky was riding with and his arm made him far heavier than the average enormous man.

“We’ll make it, Nat,” reassured Sam. “Don’t you trust me?”

“I do…it’s just such a long way down.”

“We’ll make it, and if we don’t I’ll give you ten bucks,” said Sam. He secured the last strap on Natasha and moved on to Bucky. Natasha was left to watch the ground below. Nameless senator after nameless senator were filing in along with their too-young wives. Then the diplomats arrived. Natasha couldn’t make out faces but she could make out the flags flying from their cars. First it was the French delegate, then the Spanish, then the English, and then the German.

“He’s here!” said Natasha. “He’s going inside right now!”

“We better get out there then,” said Sam. He hooked something on himself onto Bucky and did the same with Natasha. It looked like the plan was for them to dangle off of his shoulders the entire flight over. Natasha didn’t like the thought of that but it was a little late to change their plans. “Alright, we need to stay incognito, so no screaming and no jostling of any sort. We’re gonna calmly fly into the back end of the club.”

“Yes, sir,” mocked Bucky. Sam’s wings deployed and launched the three of them into the air fast enough to shut Bucky up. It was either the surprise of being hoisted into the air at an unnatural speed that shut him up or the harness knocking the wind out of him. It had the same effect on Natasha who coughed and sputtered for air the entire descent. And it was _just_ a descent. After the initial boost of altitude, Sam couldn’t gain anymore and they glided over to the backend of the country club’s rooftop. They went agonizingly slow until it felt like they were going to break the sound barrier. But Sam was unfazed and remained calm and collected as the three of them prepared for a rocky landing.

They had maybe three feet of clearance over the rooftop’s ledge. From there Sam dipped down lower, detached Bucky and Natasha from his harness and was gone. Any other day Natasha would’ve ogled at how exhilarating the flight had been but they were on a tight schedule. Both of them gave up on trying to properly un-harness themselves and ended up cutting each other’s straps off.

As predicted, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who were posted on the rooftops paid they no mind. Natasha couldn’t have been louder in her attempts to unlock the roof-top door and no one so much as turned their head.

“Nat, just shoot it off, we don’t have time.”

“Unless you’ve got a silencer, I’m not blowing this mission with a gunshot because you’re impatient. It’ll give,” said Natasha and then it gave. The door unlocked and Natasha swung it open with a prideful grin.

“Don’t waste all your luck on the easy stuff,” said Bucky.

Natasha led the way. The door led to what the two of them had to assume was the back stairwell. It was dingy but well lit. Natasha descended the first flight of stairs with a slight limp and a gun drawn.

The first door they came across was marked storage and was certainly not something they were interested in. They kept going for three full floors until they came across the main floor. The stairs were not meant to be seen by the members of the country club so the door to them was concealed behind a hallway and stuck in a corner. That gave Bucky and Natasha a few extra seconds to plan their next moves.

The club’s layout was firmly branded into their minds, they knew it like the back of their hands since they’d had almost two full days to memorize it.

“Okay, what do we do?” said Bucky.

“Well…” Natasha peeked around the corner they were hiding behind and saw no one. “I guess we just keep moving.”

“He’s gonna be in the main ballroom like everyone else.”

“We can’t go in there, everyone’s looking for us.”

“I know that,” snapped Bucky. “I say we go backstage and see if we can spot him from there.”

“And then what? Wave to him? We need to get him alone somehow.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, first we need to lay eyes on him.”

Natasha conceded and led the two of them through a few short corridors before everything opened up. There were no more halls to hide in or doors to duck into should someone come so they sprinted towards what they knew was the ballroom. Bucky watched their back, Natasha watched their front but thankfully they weren’t interrupted. They passed the grand door that led to the ballroom and skidded to a stop in front of the stage door. Natasha threw it open and Bucky made sure it shut silently.

Steve was supposed to be giving a speech in the president’s honor, and he was, his voice carried through the entire backstage area. Natasha was sure it was a wonderful speech but the backstage was pitch black. If they couldn’t rely on their eyesight to navigate she at least wanted her hearing.

“Get to the wing and peek out but don’t let any light on you or the audience’ll be able to spot you,” whispered Natasha. She and Bucky silently crept to the wings, Natasha leading the way and Bucky close behind her.

The audience was enthralled with Steve’s speech, judging by the half of the audience she could see. They hung on every word. Steve had horrible stage fright so she hoped she’d remember to tell him he didn’t make an ass out of himself like he always assumed he did. She scanned intrigued face after intrigued face but no sign of Meyer.

“We gotta go behind the curtain to the other wing, he’s not on this side,” whispered Natasha. She took a step backwards out of the wing and stepped on a foot. “Buck—“

“Not Bucky,” said a thick German accent. Before she could turn to confirm her fears, Meyer had a fistful of her hair and jerked her backwards. Natasha searched the darkness to find Bucky with his gun down and hands up. Meyer had a pistol pointed at him. “Move your ass, Barnes, we have places to be.”

Bucky walked with his hands up towards the stage door and opened it. Meyer shoved him out and dragged Natasha along.

“What do you want with us?” choked Natasha. His grip on her skull was harsh and completely unshakable.

“I think you know that, fraulein.”

“If we knew, we wouldn’t be here,” snarked Bucky. Meyer kicked him in response. A hard kick to the back. Bucky went flying and hit the floor. Because of his _condition_ , Bucky wasn’t very easily moved. He was stronger and much, much heavier than the average man. It took immense strength to budge him much less knock him down.

“Get up, Barnes!” snapped Meyer. “I’ve got something to show you both.”

Bucky scrambled back to his feet and walked forward under Meyer’s direction. He led them to the elevator. Meyer dragged Natasha in first then instructed Bucky to join them. He kept the barrel of the gun pressed to Bucky’s neck while he demanded he press “basement” on the control panel.

“Hydra’s a dying business,” began Natasha. “You’re fighting a losing war.”

“That is true. Which is why I’m here,” said Meyer. “Your government has stolen countless of Hydra’s best agents, including yourselves. I’m here to take them back.”

“You won’t be able to, Meyer.” His grip on her hair got tighter. “S.H.I.E.L.D.’s shown them the light, they know what its like to be human now, you’ll never be able to turn them back into robots, it’s pointless.”

“Is it, fraulein? After tonight, Natasha Romanoff and James Barnes are going to be dead. And they’re going to die in the name of Hydra and under the bodies of countless American senators. If two of the best, most acclimated Hydra agents stolen by S.H.I.E.L.D. can turn back to Hydra, who can’t?”

“You really think you’re gonna convert us?” said Natasha. 

The elevator doors opened to reveal the basement. It was dark, dingy, and empty. All except for one metal table with a two foot long cylinder. They were too far away for Natasha to make out the details but she had a feeling she’d get a closer look courtesy of Meyer.

“I don’t need conversion, Natasha. I just need attendance. And that is what you’ll give me,” said Meyer. He shoved Bucky forward with too much force, as if his strength was something even he couldn’t control, and escorted the two of them towards the table.

The cylinder was a light colored metal. Either end of it had a series of tubes and wires protruding and disappearing back into the main component. It took mere seconds for Natasha to identify what it was and to know she was in over her head. A bomb that was maybe three quarters of her size and made by Hydra could and would take the entire block out. Her breathing got quicker and shallower.

“What is this?” asked Bucky.

“Your pyre,” replied Meyer.

“Seriously what is it?”

“It’s a bomb, Buck, it’s a bomb,” stammered Natasha.

“Excellent work, fraulein,” said Meyer with a patronizing tone.

“You’ll kill yourself with it, you can’t keep us down here without blowin’ yourself up,” said Bucky, his calm demeanor had all but completely slipped away.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Sergeant.” Meyer kept his hand firmly gripped in Natasha’s scalp and dragged her forward a few steps towards Bucky. “Put it around your wrist.”

Natasha couldn’t see what Meyer had gestured to thanks to his grip on her head, but once it was around Bucky’s wrist it was clear.

“A handcuff?” said Natasha with too much bravado. “You think we can’t break through a handcuff?!”

He jerked her head. “I know you both very well. And I know you can break free of these restraints. But you forget how skilled our Hydra engineers are.” The handcuff around Bucky’s wrist clicked itself into place and locked. “Tampering of any kind with these restraints will set the bomb off early.”

“I’ll cut my fuckin’ hand off, you don’t scare me,” said Natasha.

“I don’t doubt that.” Meyer slammed her against the table and cuffed her hand to the opposite side of the bomb from Bucky. “But, Natasha, do you think you can cut through your wrist with no knife and only five minutes?”

He let go of her hair finally. Natasha took it as an opportunity to get in a hit. One arm was still mostly immobile and numb from the anesthetic, and the other was handcuffed to a bomb, so she employed her legs and got in one solid kick to Meyer’s chest. Her didn’t even step back.

“What the hell are you?!” She let the panic seep into her voice.

“I don’t expect you to remember me, after all you were just a baby when I found you,” said Meyer. “But Sergeant Barnes, how could you ever forget me?”

“What?” Bucky’s voice sounded the way it did when he woke up from a nightmare. Confused, anxious, and afraid. Meyer took a step closer to him and bent down to get in his face.

“Barnes,” said Meyer in a sing-song voice that sent chills down Natasha’s spine. “My first and only subject. What a success you could have become if you didn’t give into such a soft life at S.H.I.E.L.D..”

Natasha watched Bucky’s shaking lip turn into a forceful headbutt. It pushed Meyer back a step and had him massaging his forehead momentarily.

He didn’t stop massaging. He rubbed harsh circles into his forehead until a horrible red burst through. He did the same to his cheeks and nose, his eyes, his jaw, his chin. Peeling and pulling and ripping his skin from his face, revealing more and more pure red and sheer bones. Natasha’s stomach churned each time the horrible sound of his flesh hitting the floor echoed through the room but he wouldn’t stop until his entire head was a bright, gleaming, familiar red.

“You see, Barnes, nothing can kill the immortal,” laughed the Red Skull.

“You may have survived what S.H.I.E.L.D. did to you but you’re weak and you’re failing!” shouted Natasha. His head snapped in her direction. They held eye contact for a few tense moments before he rushed her. He grabbed her jaw with one hand and got a familiar fistful of her hair with the other. He squeezed too hard with both.

“Tell me fraulein,” said the Red Skull, his fingers pressing harder and harder into her cheeks, her jaw, and her skull. “Does this feel weak to you?”

She swore she felt her bones splintering and preparing to shatter under his grip. Her poked face broke and she cried out. She heard Bucky next to her make an effort to stop him but Bucky couldn’t reach them without triggering the bomb and he was going to have no luck talking the Red Skull down. She cried. She screeched through her clenched teeth and hot tears rolled down her cheeks and into the Red Skull’s hands.

“What is it Mary DiMaggio? Last time I saw you, you were so happy to see me,” teased the Red Skull. It was hard for Natasha to wrap her head around that fact. That four days prior, the creature before her had been Ernst Meyer and she had been Mary DiMaggio, and the two of them had danced too close at a dinner party.

“If you kill her—“ began Bucky.

“What’ll you do, Barnes? Will you run crying to Steve Rogers?! The three of us have left the world behind. You should be thanking me for disposing of the road blocks that keep you from achieving your true potential as one of God’s chosen men!”

His grip got tighter still. His eyes bore into hers. They were full of madness, rage, and intensity. And yet Natasha knew he wasn’t using his full strength, he was barely even struggling. If he wanted her dead quick he couldn’t done it with his bare hands but he wanted her to suffer. His face was terrifying far away and disturbing when it was inches from hers. His bones were so sharp and prominent, his cheeks so sunken, his eyes so detached. His whole face gave every indication that he was no longer any shade of human and it frighten Natasha to her core. She screamed one more time, with everything her body had. Her tears fell faster and her voice carried farther. And just as suddenly as he began the torture, his hands left her.

He took a multitude of steps backwards from the two of them. Natasha took in labored breaths and let her bones realign.

“In five minutes, that bomb will blow and you two will be nothing more but a pair of disappointments. What you could’ve been for Hydra. You’ll never understand your full potentials,” said the Red Skull.

“Get the hell away from us or I’ll set it off right now!” shouted Bucky as he jostled his handcuff. The Red Skull rolled his eyes in their spacious sockets and left without another word.

Natasha watched him go, the torture had stopped but the tears hadn’t. She’d come close to death often, hell she’d come close to death multiple times in the passed few days, but she’d never been at it’s doorstep. In five minutes she _would_ meet her maker. No inspiration words came to her, just a blank canvas of abstract fear.

“Alright, Nat, diffuse this thing, it’s making me nervous,” said Bucky.

“What?” said Natasha. Her voice sounded so far away.

“Diffuse it!” demanded Bucky. She could see the tears of the same empty fear in his eyes.

“I don’t know how,” said Natasha with a crack in her voice. “I don’t know how.”

“You…” Bucky’s voice faltered and tears streaked his cheeks. His voice was a high pitched plead. “Learn….Learn how right now, Nat.”

“I can’t, I’m not that agent,” said Natasha. “I’m not the perfect fighting machine Hydra made me anymore, I’m full of holes and flaws and I can’t diffuse this damn bomb!” Her voice was quivering and her eyes were welling and coating her face with salty tears.

“Yes you are, dammit!”

“I’m not as good as used to be, I don’t know how to do this anymore!”

“Yes you do, Nat! You do! You may be a little more human now that you’re through with Hydra but you don’t just forget skill! You’re the best agent I know—“

“You don’t know everything about me, Buck! Everything I do that you think is instinct or natural is me just barely making it! You don’t get it ‘cause you still function on a Hydra level of agent! I’ve lost my touch, I don’t have my intuition, I don’t have my nerve, and I certainly don’t have my old skills! I couldn’t figure out how to land a fuckin’ plane and you think I can just diffuse this fucking nuke!”

“Yes!” screamed Bucky. “Nat, everyone is like that! You think I’m not scrambling to keep it together! You think the reason my mission success count is as high as it is is due to anything at all other than dumb luck and you being my partner! The only thing we lost when we left Hydra was being fearless! Being afraid’s tripped us up a lot but we’re still good agents and you still know how to diffuse a bomb!”

“I can’t!”

“NAT!” His voice was loud enough that Natasha worried it would trigger the bomb. But after the initial scream, he got calm and reached with his entire body to put a hand on her shoulder. “I know you’re scared of this thing going off, of messing up again, but it’s gonna blow whether you do it or whether time does it so…dig deep. You’ve done this before—“

“It was a different bomb—“

“You can do it again. You’re the smartest person I know and I _know_ you can figure this one out. It’s either that or we’re gone in the next three minutes.”

“Alright,” said Natasha, her mouth before her mind. “I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

Natasha moved most of herself in front of the bomb, being careful to leave her cuffed hand mostly on the table as not to jostle it at all. The timer had two and a half minutes left. Natasha scanned everything she could see about the bomb. Wires, tubes, a hard outer casing, and of course the timer.

Bucky may have been right, that her old Hydra-efficient self was lying somewhere within her current self, but that didn’t mean she could access it. After all their current selves were much stronger than their Hydra selves. It was fear that led Bucky to hide those files from S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first place, fear that convinced Natasha they should go on the run, fear that kept them from the train to Virginia, fear of failure that made Natasha lie about her flight abilities, fear that made Bucky call Steve mid-mission, fear that brought them into the arms of Sam. Hell, it was fear that got them switched from normal combat missions to low-level missions in the first place. Everything they did was based on their fear of the outcome, fear of the process, or fear of themselves. And if so much of them could be dictated by fear for so long, Natasha wasn’t sure there was enough space in her left to house little details like bomb diffusing instructions.

She stared blankly at the timer, watching it tick down one by one and wondering if anything would ever come to her. And then it all did. Mountains of information hit her like a tidal wave and in an instant she confidently cut three wires at once. The timer froze on fifty five seconds remaining.

Bucky made a guttural noise of relief. “Fucking Christ!”

“C’mon, we’ve gotta catch up to him wherever the hell he went.” Confidence she hadn’t had in months laced her voice. She snapped the handcuff off of her side of the bomb and Bucky did the same. The two of them ran for the stairwell.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

They emerged on the main floor. The S.H.I.E.L.D. security detail was on high alert and in a full lockdown. They were quick to aim their guns at Bucky and Natasha who raised their hands.

“Guns down!” said Steve from the ballroom’s entrance. He barreled out and shoved a few of the guns down himself. “He’s on the roof!”

“Evacuate!” said Natasha. “There’s a bomb in the basement big enough to level the whole block!

They split up from there. Natasha assumed Steve would start evacuating and dismantling the bomb but she didn’t have the time to make sure he did. She sprinted up the stairs as fast as her injured leg would take her with Bucky right on her heels. Her lungs burned and her muscles shook with a foreboding weakness by the time the two of them emerged on the roof.

There was the Red Skull. He stood at the opposite end of the roof top and was waiting for the helicopter hovering above him to drop a ladder. He must’ve guessed by the lack of an explosion that Natasha and Bucky had gotten free and was not at all surprised to see the two of them. He yelled something in German up to the pilot of the helicopter and the ladder dropped down. Natasha had no plan but sprinted towards him anyway.

He was too strong to take down on her own, there was a very good chance he’d just fling her off the edge of the roof to her death. Her only chance was to ruin his means of getting onto the helicopter. So she bolted for the ladder. He saw her intentions and did the same. She had to get on at least a few rungs higher than him.

“Bucky, get me onto that ladder!” screamed Natasha. She hoped he heard her over the din created by the sirens driving up every street and the helicopter blades. She didn’t know exactly how he was going to get her up there but she knew he’d find some way of intercepting the Red Skull, and he did. Seconds after she demanded Bucky find a way to get her higher on the rope ladder, Bucky picked her up and threw her on to it.

The whole ladder swung against her weight but she held fast. A brief glance down and she met the Red Skull’s hideous eyes. He looked just as surprised as she was for their makeshift plan to have actually worked. But there was no time to waste. She didn’t have the strength advantage over him, and in the air she didn’t have the agility advantage either. The only way to stop him getting into the helicopter and escaping was to destroy the ladder. So she pulled a knife and started cutting.

“What are you doing!” screamed the Red Skull. “If you cut the ladder you’ll die too!”

Natasha ignored him and cut through one side of the rope ladder. It gave way. The Red Skull swung out of control a few rungs below her. She just barely kept her grip and wasted no time getting to work on the second side of the rope ladder. The helicopter swirled and swung over the streets below, trying to shake her off and failing.

“NAT, NO!” Bucky’s voice from the rooftop twenty odd feet away was so blood curdlingly loud, Natasha could hear it clear as a bell over the helicopter and the sirens. But it wouldn’t stop her. She kept cutting and cutting and then it snapped. “NATASHA!”

She’d done a lot in her life, but falling to her death was not one of them. The Red Skull, a few feet below her, screamed on behalf of them both, she stayed silent and watched the night sky, waiting for the ground to strip the life from her in an instant.

She heard screams from below followed by a loud woosh and a disgusting series of cracks that she knew was the Red Skull connecting with the ground. For a few moments, she wondered why she hadn’t joined him on the ground but her questions were answered before she could fully form the thoughts. Two arms enveloped and held her tight and broke her fall.

“You’re damn lucky I put these wings back on,” said Sam in Natasha’s ear. Natasha wanted to thank him for saving her life but no words came out. Maybe it was the earth rushing by underneath her at 20 odd miles per hour, maybe it was the headrush she had from falling, or maybe it was the double near death experience. Either way, as soon as she was aware of being in Sam’s reliable grip, the world went black and the sirens and screams from pedestrians both faded away.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

She woke basked in fluorescent lighting. When she breathed in it smelled medical and sanitary. She blinked and got a little bit of movement through all her extremities just to be sure she still had that ability. Then she sat up. She noticed the oxygen mask on her face and tore it off. She noticed she was on a gurney, a gurney nestled in the back of an ambulance. Stubbornness told her to get up and out of the ambulance, to let someone who needed it get in. Her legs shook under her as she climbed out the back. 

They were still at the country club but the sirens and screaming were gone. The entire block was lined with police tape and a few pockets of small crowds along with police officers keeping them at bay. But there was no recognizable face among the bunch. Her eyes kept scanning the poorly lit faces of the officers and agents, hoping to see a friend. She stopped when a shock blanket was draped around her shoulders. She turned on a dime and looked up to see Agent Carter with a grin painted across her face.

“Ma’am,” said Natasha.

“You’re supposed to be inside the ambulance, Romanoff,” said Peggy.

“What happened?”

“You killed Red Skull. For good it seems. I don’t think even he could recover from that direct a hit to the…everything,” said Peggy.

“He’s really dead?”

“Yes…and it’s all thanks to you and Barnes’s insistence that Howard and I were wrong.” Even in Natasha’s semi-lucid state it was satisfying seeing Peggy eat humble pie. “Although I heard that we had a few mutinous agents help you along the way.”

“We did, yes,” said Natasha.

“I suppose it’s for the best given the circumstances. If Howard and I hadn’t been so damn focused on securing more funding we might’ve caught this whole ‘Meyer’ persona before it got this bad.”

“Don’t feel bad. It was a really good cover, even I had my doubts about going AWOL a few times.” Natasha smirked and Peggy did the same.

“Well I have never seen going AWOL turn out so well for _anyone_ , and that includes when Steve broke into the Hydra base so many years ago. Not only did you put me in my place but you killed our top Hydra enemy at large. I’m sure a medal and a paid for vacation are in your futures.”

“Speaking of,” began Natasha awkwardly, “where’s Bucky?”

“He had to get checked out by the EMTs, I’ll let him know you’re awake,” said Peggy. “You just,” she put her hands on Natasha’s shoulders and sat her down on the edge of the ambulance, “you just sit here and rest.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Thank _you_ , Natasha. And I’m sorry I kept you in the dark about what we knew. You didn’t have the clearance to read his file and…I guess I got blinded by the bureaucracy and forgot that you’re our best agent. I should’ve trusted you and I won’t make that mistake again.”

“And if you do, I can just break into the records room again and execute a little more vigilante justice,” joked Natasha. Peggy laughed and rolled her eyes.

“I can tell you’re feeling better,” said Peggy. “I’ll go find Barnes for you, I don’t want you walking on that leg of yours.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Natasha was alone with her completely clear mind for only a minute when she spotted Bucky across the mess of police cars, ambulances, and agents’ cars. She waved and he waved back before breaking into a sprint. He skidded to a stop in front of her and wrapped both arms around her as tight as he could, which was far too tight.

“Buck, you’re gonna crush me,” wheezed Natasha.

“Good! I can’t believe you did that!” said Bucky.

“I had to!”

“I had to,” repeated Bucky in a mocking tone. He took a deep breath in and sighed to stave off the impending tears. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”

“You and me both,” said Natasha. She patted the spot on the ambulance next to her. “Come sit.”

Bucky did. He sat right up against her and draped half of her shock blanket around himself. “Did you get a fancy apology from Peggy too?”

“I did, she seems really sorry.”

“But did you hear, we’re getting a vacation. I was thinking we could go to Disneyland since I’ve only ever been with Steve and he hates rollercoasters.”

“What if I don’t wanna spend my vacation with you?”

“As if you have a choice.”

Natasha laughed and shoved Bucky over with what little strength she had, Bucky did it back very half-heartedly since she was considerably more worn out than he was. A comfortable silence stretched from there through the following five minutes. The two of them sat together and watched various agents doing tedious work around the varying cars. The pedestrian crowds lining the police tape began to disperse a bit.

“I knew you could do it,” said Bucky suddenly.

“Hm?” said Natasha sleepily.

“I knew you could do it. Getting nervous, getting scared, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost your touch, it just means you know when to run away now. You’re the best agent in all of S.H.I.E.L.D. and you proved it again tonight so stop doubting yourself over stupid little things.”

“Thanks Buck, I needed that.” She meant it. It may have taken more convincing than she was proud of, but she was finally convinced that her merits as a an agent didn’t fade away with her brainwashing. It would’ve been ideal if she didn’t need a series of near-death experiences to convince her but when had her life ever panned out ideally.


End file.
